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LIFE IN D EATH 



AND 



DEATH IN LIFE. 

A PARADOX: 

Illustrating what we Know, and what we Believe. 

WITH CBITICISMS ON THE 

MORALS AND MANNERS OF MODERN SOCIETY. 



BY MATTHEW HOWARD, M. D. 



" I trust you understand how, though it be one ©f the maxims of 
true Philosophy, never to shrink from a doctrine which has evidence 
on its side, yet, it is another maxim never to harbor any doctrine where 
this evidence is wanting." — Thos. Chalmers, D. D m LL.D., Astronom- 
ical Discourses. 

NEW YORK: 

WM. L. ALLISON, PUBLISHER, 

128 Nassau Street. 



«$$ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

MATTHEW HOWARD, M.D., 
In the Office 01 the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



W. McCREA & CO., 

Stereotypers, 

Newbnrgh, N. Y. 



DEDICATION 

TO 



Dedications are falling into disuse, like many 
other good old fashions. The Author proposes 
to revive the custom, in one that may be con- 
sidered of disproportionate length. In this man- 
ner, some ideas which are irrelevant to the gen- 
eral purpose of the work may be quietly smug- 
gled in. 

This is the age of sturdy independence. The 
work of the brain, like the work of the artisan, 
stands or falls upon its own merits. Old-time 
dedications and prefaces were painfully subser- 
vient to wealthy and titled commonplaces. Phi- 
losophers and poets often compromised the dig- 
nity of science and literature by their fulsome 
flattery of "patrons," and their side pleas for 
favor and indulgence from critics and reviewers. 

The obsequiousness which authors display to 
public opinion is unaccountable. The object of 
a book is to embody new ideas and thoughts 



IV DEDICATION. 

which the writer believes to be worthy of pres- 
ervation, and which are the products of his own 
intelligence and experience. His mission is to 
form and influence public opinion if he can — 
not to conciliate it. He will fail or succeed in 
his object in proportion to the intrinsic force 
of his offering and not in proportion to his 
success in propitiating individual criticism. 

Influenced by these views, the Author will 
take a new departure. He offers to dedicate 
this fruit of his labor, whether it is of much or 
little value, as a mark of his respect", to some 
one 

Who abjures all prejudices of birth, station, 
sect and religion. 

Who respects worth wherever it may be 
found. 

Who knows the Golden Rule, and follows it. 

Who will not sacrifice justice to self. 

Who cringes neither to wealth nor power. 

Who despises cant and hypocrisy. 

Who resists oppression when attempted to be 
enforced on himself or his weaker neighbor. 

Who, knowing his own failings, has charity 
for the weaknesses of others. 

Who loves liberty. 

Whose opinions cannot be bought. 

Who takes no advantage of weakness or igno- 
rance. 

Who respects age, and loves infancy. 

Who holds principle above power or position. 



DEDICATION. V 

Who respects the rights of others, while be- 
ing tenacious of his own. 

Who is merciful to all living things. 

Who knows his own fallibility of judgment. 

Who hates presumptuous fanaticism. 

Who scouts self-appointed censors of morals 
and manners. 

Who respects the counsels of the pure and 
good, if unobtrusive. 

Who recognizes no social distinction except 
that which is based on virtue and intelligence. 

The Author has searched about for one who 
possesses these qualifications — not with the candle 
of a Diogenes, but in the light of thirty years 
of varied experience. 

He has looked in the pulpit, the cloister, the 
rostrum, the counting-house, the work-shop; in 
the walks of public and private life; among 
philosophers, sinners, and professed saints; among 
the rich and the poor, the high and the low; but 
— as is often the case with our wise judges, who 
exact negative qualities as the necessary require- 
ments of a competent juror — the panel has been 
exhausted and no one found. 

Therefore, the space stands vacant for the 
name of one who can fill the stated requirements. 
It will be printed in Golden Lettebs whenever 
known. 

Brooklyn, 1ST. Y., July 25, 1872. 



INTKODUCTOKY. 



The objects of this little volume are : 

1. To point out what are believed to be errors 
in accepted systems of Mental Philosophy. 

2. To tell all that is known — which is very 
little — about the union of the spirit with' the 
body, in the beginning of life, and of the per- 
manent separation of the spirit from the body, — 
which is death. 

3. To treat of the extraordinary phenomena 
which attend the temporary separation of the 
spirit from the body ; and of the paradoxical 
propositions: That the spirit may live while 
the body is apparently dead, and that the body 
may really live while the spirit has apparently 
ceased to exist. 

4. To show that a religion which includes a 
belief in God, and in a future existence, is natu- 
ral to mankind. 

5. That this religion is founded on truths 
which are taught by instinct. 

6. That beyond this instinctive knowledge we 



Vlll INTRODUCTORY 

"know nothing as to the nature or destiny of the 
soul. All other religious teachings are matters 
of belief alone. 

7. That the various teachings which purport 
to be oracular expositions of truths in morals 
and science, are legitimate topics of criticism, 
and are, in many respects, questionable. 

8. That the spiritualistic theories of the day 
are full of error. 

9. That we are far less wise in our genera- 
tion than we suppose ourselves to be. 

10. That rejected doctrines may be revived 
and reconsidered with profit. 

An essay of limited size devoted to the treat- 
ment of such a multiplicity of topics must of ne- 
cessity seem somewhat disjointed and discursive 
in its arrangement. The brevity of the argu- 
ments may give them something of the character 
of mere suggestions or assertions. So that the 
ideas are imparted, the author is content that 
they shall be so considered. They at least in- 
volve important subjects for reflection and in- 
vestigation, which may be pursued more closely, 
in accordance with each one's option or inclina- 
tion. 



INTRODUCTORY. IX 

You, Reader, cannot turn these pages with- 
out meeting with some thought which you will 
condemn. Perhaps the manner of its expression 
will be as distasteful as the thought itself. Read 
on, and you will meet with others which will 
extort your assent — if not your approval. 

The writer seeks neither to please nor offend 
in matter or style. He has obeyed an impulse 
to write his convictions in his own way. He 
neither 'fears condemnation nor courts applause ; 
bui has been impelled in all his utterances by 
simple honesty of feeling. 

This is always entitled to respectful consider- 
ation, even if not presented in a display of ele- 
gant rhetoric, or backed by prominence in the 
world of letters. 

Loving truth, hating oppression, despising 
pretentious arrogance and hypocrisy, and flouting 
all self-constituted tyrannies, whether social, po- 
litical or religious, he has written — what he has 
written — and here it is. 

The author, in advance, repudiates all connec- 
tion w T ith the disciples or belief in the doctrines 
of Voltaire, Paine, Rousseau, id omne genus. He 



X INTRODUCTORY. 

owns no allegiance to rationalistic schools of 
philosophy. If the dogmas of these writers or 
systems ever impressed him, he has long since 
forgotten them. The fine-drawn distinctions which 
are sought to be established between Mate- 
rialism and Immaterialism are all lost to him. 
He looks at things as they are, or as he can be 
made to understand them. He walks and talks 
in the light of his own intelligence only. 
Whether this be beyond the capacity oft a rush- 
light in your estimation, will depend on your 
attainments and your prejudices. 

Those who thirst for literary fame, and itch 
for the world's applause, may toil on, exhausting 
mind and body in acquiring accomplishments of 
style and stores of erudition, which captivate 
the fancy and impress the taste. And when 
fame is achieved — what is it? Falstaff answers 
pithily. 

Dissertations abounding in Hebrew, Greek 
and Latin phrases, in such profusion as to smack 
of pedantry ; sentences pruned carefully in ac- 
cordance with the rules of elegant logic; round- 
ing periods, and eloquent perorations, may carry 



INTRODUCTORY. XI 

force with them, because they are evidences of 
application. But do these adornments alter or 
improve the quality of the subject matter ? 
When stripped of all this tinsel, has it more 
weight or force? 

Be it known that Fashion and Taste rule in 
the world of Belles-Lettres, as elsewhere. The 
conventional black coat, kid-gloves, and white cra- 
vat, are also received in polite circles of litera- 
ture on trust. 

Homespun and brogans are excluded, or at 
best scrutinized with suspicious distrust, when 
really they may envelop more strength of body, 
honesty of purpose, manliness of principle and 
originality of thought, than can often be found 
under the garb of fashion. 

Common sense, observation and experience, 
underlie all that is useful in the labors of learn- 
ing, or the manifestations of genius. It is as 
much of these first as the writer can justly claim 
which have inspired the thoughts contained in 
this volume. It is to the judgment of these 
same qualities in others that it is commended. 

The pursuit of themes which have reference 



Xll 



INTRODUCTORY. 



to the connection of the soul with its temporary- 
habitation, necessarily leads to the discussion of 
subjects which trend on recognized systems of 
Theology, as well as Mental Philosophy. We 
propose to reason on facts which present them- 
selves, outside of Revelation^ and follow them to 
some logical conclusion. The thoughts which 
are suggested are given as they present them- 
selves, without reference to strict order. The 
object is mainly to refute error — not to establish 
any special hypothesis. 



SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. 



I>^RT I. 

PAGB 

Introductory . . . . . . . . vii. 

CHAPTER I. 
Argument. — Religion and "Morality founded in part on 
instinctive knowledge — Common-sense vs. Metaphys- 
ical abstraction — Sound grain sifted from chaff— -Old 
wine better than new — Exploded doctrines revived . 21 

CHAPTER II. 
Argument. — Special objections to the doctrine of innate 
ideas reviewed — Inborn knowledge essential to the 
knowledge of some truths — If absent the truth 
remains unknown — Universal assent not necessary 
to prove innate knowledge — Instinct and Reason 
allied — Conscience defined 29 

CHAPTER III. 
Argument. — 1. When life of the body commences. 
2. Possible distinction between vegetative and con- 
scious life. 3. No evidence of conscious life previous to 
birth — We cannot say when it first dawned upon our 
minds, "We live and have being." 4. Visionary the- 
ories. 5. Physiological distinctions before and after 
birth. 6. Distinct life the immediate result of concep- 
tion. 7. Induction of premature labor unjustifiable 
without warrant of necessity 4< 



XIV 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 
Argument. — 1. Definition of death — Forms of death. 

2. Instinctive belief in future life. 3. Reason incom- 
petent to reach absolute knowledge .... 46 

CHAPTER V. 
Argument. — 1. Actual death not always easily deter- 
mined. 2. Absence of visible signs of life no evidence. 

3. Premature interments — Indubitable proofs of death. 

4. Restoration in cases of supposed death. 5. The 
hasty use of ice reprehensible. 6. Rules which should 
govern Inquests 51 

CHAPTER VI. 
Argument. — 1. Causes of death-trance ; possibly epidemic. 
2. Narrative of Vampirism. 3. The Vampire a sub- 
ject of death-trance. 4. Mayo's theory. 5. Marvels of 
partial death-trance. 6. Rational explanations . . 58 

CHAPTER VII. 
Argument. — 1. Self-induction of death-trance — Practised 
by the Hindoos — Feat of resurrection from the dead 
possible and said to be performed. 2. These wonders 
give rise to spiritualistic heresies. 3. Susceptible of 
explanation ; if not, probably impostures. 4. Particu- 
lar cases reviewed . 67 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Argument. — 1. Living prodigies not uncommon — "Blind 
Tom," a natural musician. 2. Holland, a natural 
mathematician. 3. Instinctive knowledge infallible. 
4. Proof in lower animals. 5. Issue with the Mental 
Philosophy of Schools 7? 

CHAPTER IX. 
Argument. — 1. Without instinct or Revelation we can 
attain to no knowledge of spiritual truth. 2. Certain 



CONTENTS. XV 

PAGE 

forms of belief influenced by national characteristics. 
3. Theism, or belief in one God, natural to mankind — 
Therefore, a Natural Religion — It includes a belief in 
future life. 4. Paganism and Theism of synonymous 
signification — Recognition of God universal, at all 
periods • 77 

CHAPTER X. 
Argument, — 1. Death affords no lesson which throws 
light on the soul's destiny. 2. The phenomena of 
apparent extinction of spirit during life of the body. 
3. This temporary suspension of spirit-life suggests an 
enigma. 4. Reason failing, we look to Revelation — 
Another quandary — Which is the true doctrine? 
5. Corollaries of the foregoing . . . . .83 

CHAPTER XI. 

Argument. — 1. There can be but one true theory of the 
soul's destiny — This is hard to be distinguished among 
the many false doctrines. 2. We must of necessity 
rely on fallible human judgment in the selection. 

3. When selected, must be adopted and subscribed to 
without demur — This is Bational Christianity. 

4. Atheism impossible except as the result of moral or 
intellectual deficiency. 5. Inculcations of Natural 
Religion reiterated 93 

CHAPTER XII. 
Argument. — 1. The doctrine of Infinite Love submitted — 
Not sustained by mere finite ideas of mercy. 2. Nature 
of all living creatures to suffer, and to inflict pain — 
The strong preys upon the weak. 3. These things 
more in accordance with our ideas of Satanic origin. 
4. Blessings of existence here compensate for penalties 
— Impossible to fathom the motives of the Creator . 98 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Argument. — 1. If Revelation be accepted, the right of 
self-judgment must be surrendered. 2. It is hard to 
enforce reason to obedience. 3. Self -elected teachers 
considered. 4. Principles of right inculcated by 
nature 103 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Argument. — 1. Spiritualistic fantasies founded on excep- 
tional natural occurrences — These are fruitful sources 
of delusion and imposition. 2. Those which are now 
mysteries await solution by some laws of nature yet 
to be discovered. 3. Some trnth in these theories 
barely possible 109 

CHAPTER XV. 

Argument. — 1. The only legitimate social, distinctions 
are based on spiritual and physical excellence. 2. Bur- 
ial rites of the Aborigines and Hindoos exhibit a per- 
fect faith in future life Ill 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Argument.— -1. Theories of the nature of the Spirit or 
soul. 2. Atheistical doctrines derived in part from 
vague definitions of the truths of Natural Science. 
3. Matter infinitely divisible. 4. Line between Material- 
ism and Immaterialism not easily defined. 5. Special 
Materialistic theories. 6. Recurrence to the phenomena 
of temporary death of the body 115 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Argument. — 1. Phrenology questionable in part. 2. An- 
imal Magnetism the origin of spiritual heresies. 
3. Materialistic illustration — Not too absurd to obtain 
credence. 4. Vagary of a student of the German Uni- 
versities — He commits suicide. 5. Whether the 
spirit is Material or Immaterial — is really immaterial . 127 



CONTENTS. XV11 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Argument. — 1. Reasoning on the personal nature of the 
Godhead presumptuous — No knowledge attainable 
unless through revelation. 2. Religious ideas of the 
personalities of Heaven, whether real or illusory , harm- 
less. 3. Pleasant delusions. 4. Delusions not so pleas- 
ant .. . 134 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Final Argument. — 1. The part of wisdom — Christianity 
a safe harbor — Universal confession of faith. . . 140 



PART II. 



CHAPTER I. 

Inconsistencies of pulpit preaching and practice — Schisms 
in religion and science always arising — Self-elected 
teachers sometimes morally insane — Better that free- 
dom of speech should be abused than suppressed — 
Vicious bigots muzzled — No more persecutions for 
opinion's sake — Missionary "blessings" sometimes 
look like curses . • • ... . . 145 

CHAPTER II. 
Law for the poor, not for the Rich — Speedy justice to 
the vagabond — Its adminstration a farce — Reforma- 
tion needed 153 

CHAPTER III. 
Slaves of the Needle— (A Plea for Sewing-Women) . . 158 

CHAPTER IV. 
Woman's Rights theories 166 



XV111 CONTENTS. 

PiyM 

CHAPTER V. 
Affinities and Divorces — Evils which spring from social 
heresies — Special arguments reviewed — Only one tol- 
erable feature . . 170 

CHAPTER VI. 
Nature's Nobility — Story of self-sacrifice — Pride, World- 
wisdom, and Charity contrasted 178 

CHAPTER VII. 

Capital Punishment considered — Such suffering as the 
sentence of death entails, cannot be made equal in de- 
gree, for like offences — The right of society to adjudge 
a prisoner to death, not beyond question — Is death it- 
self a punishment ? 182 



A.FFEIS-DIX. 



Holland, the Natural Mathematician. (Note to Chapter 
VII.— Part I.) 195 

Reason in Animals — Anecdotes. (Notes to. Chapter II. — 
Part I.) 198 

Law and its Administration. (Note to Chapter II. — 
Part II.) 204 



PART I. 



LIFE IN DEATH 



AND 



DEATH IN LIFE 



11 Within the hollow crown 
That rounds the mortal temples of a King 
Keeps Death his court ; and there the antic sits, 
' Mocking his state, and grinning at his pomp." 



CHAPTEK I. 



Argument — Religion and Morality founded, in part, on 
instinctive knowledge. 



Common sense vs. metaphysical abstractions — A few sound 
grains sifted from an overwhelming load of transcen- 
dental chaff— Old wine better than new — Exploded doc- 
trines revived. 

Over-zealous advocates of the Bible have 
committed a grave error. They suppose that if 
man is shown to be entirely dependent on its 
teachings for all spiritual knowledge, the more 
faith he will have in it. The truth is to be found 
in the converse of this proposition. If outside 
evidence alone is sufficient to establish the fact of 
God's existence, and to convince man of the 
immortality and accountability of his soul, the 
more readily will he turn his belief to the neces 
sity, as well as the truth ; of there being some 
direct and explicit revelation of His will. If 
convinced that his Creator has conferred upon him 



22 SELF-CONVICTED ERRORS. 

eternal life, it will be his logical conclusion that 
there must be some authoritative laws for his gov- 
ernment and guidance while on earth. It was 
formerly taught that man was gifted with innate 
ideas of spiritual truths. 

Avalanches of sophistical and speculative 
essays have been launched against this old doc- 
trine, until it is supposed to be buried out of 
sight. A common-sense pursuit of truth, how- 
ever, if put upon the trail of these sophisms, will 
find that they lead to nothingness. It will of 
necessity take the back-track. The trail, then, 
each moment becomes more distinct, until it leads 
back again to where these rejected truths lie 
buried. 

We propose to exhume a few of them, which 
are essential to the objects of this work, for a new 
airing, notwithstanding that they have been stig- 
matized as "antiquated, worn-out and thread- 
bare theories." 

The rejection of belief in innate ideas has led 
to so much abstract reasoning, for and against the 
truths of Revelation, that an ordinary compre- 
hension is lost in the maze. It can get no fur- 
ther light than is furnished by the self-evident 






SELF-CONVICTED ERRORS. 23 

fact which, all start from — that spiritual knowl- 
edge must rest on external or internal evidences. 

The Deist, denying the authenticity of the 
Bible and the doctrine of intuitive knowledge, 
says that he knows God from the revelation He 
has made of Himself in the universe. He denies 
that this knowledge is even in part derived from 
the illumination of certain impresses originally 
stamped on the soul. 

The Bible champion — denying and scouting 
the doctrine of innate knowledge also — declares 
that all knowledge of God and God's laws is 
derived from Revelation, and that all external 
evidences are only corroborative of the authen- 
ticity of the Bible truths. According to this last 
view, every fact which conveys to our mind cer- 
tain or authoritative knowledge of the being of 
God, or that " thrills our soul with a felt but 
uncomprehended sense of His presence," are all 
external. 

The Deist and the Trinitarian, however, logi- 
cally following the reasoning which supports 
their respective systems, soon find themselves in 
a muddle of confusion ; the Deist saying that 
God is not revealed through traditional teach- 



24 SELF-CONVICTED ERRORS. 

ings preserved in printed books, but in the works 
of nature, and " within us through the medium 
of our moral and spiritual senses. 5 '* 

We cannot conceive what form or species of 
revelation this may be, when regarded from the 
Deistical standpoint. But it looks very much 
like a gentle, crab-like movement, back to the 
"exploded, worn-out and threadbare theory" of 
intuitive knowledge. 

The Bible champion, on the other hand, 
scouts these " internal evidences," and main- 
tains dogmas diametrically the reverse — that any 
revelation of spiritual truth, to be authoritative, 
must be external; that the only possible prod- 
ucts of internal revelation must be the " hallu- 
cinations of fancy." Here he halts abruptly, how- 
ever, and makes one exception — the knowledge 
of our own existence — which is a part of spirit- 
ual truth, but which is unquestionably a revela- 
tion from within. 

So that, after all, there is one truth which 
can only be an innate revelation. The " fogyish, 
antiquated and worn-out theory" will have to 

* F. W. Newman. The Soul : its sorrows and its aspira- 
tions. 



SELF-CONVICTED ERRORS. 25 

be revived, after all, to disentangle these logical 
snarls. If one spiritual truth is written on man's 
mind by " the finger of God," it is not hard to 
believe that the most important of all truths — 
the knowledge of His existence — may have been 
written there also. 

It is asked, " If a man be shut out from all 
acquaintance with the works of God, what knowl- 
edge can he possibly have of His will or power ? " 
To this we reply that the consciousness of its own 
existence would lead the mind to a limited con- 
ception of a Creator; and that conscience might 
afford a vague definition of His will. If it is 
objected that this may be considered external 
evidence, as the mind may examine itself as a 
thing apart from itself — a kind of introspective 
analysis of its own nature and origin, we then 
leave the sophist to enjoy his conclusion, and 
acknowledge frankly that we cannot tell how it 
is that man has this intuitive knowledge. If he 
has it, the fact cannot be reasoned out of exist- 
ence. It is no less a truth because we cannot 
understand it. 

Intuitive knowledge and acquired knowledge 
are probably subject to the same laws of mental 



26 SELF-CONVICTED ERRORS. 

development. Increase in the strength of correl- 
ative faculties, by exercise and experience, may- 
enlarge, strengthen, and confirm inherent impres- 
sions. Truths which may be mere germs in the 
original constitution of the mind, may blossom 
into full growth with other powers with which 
they are inseparably blended and connected. 

The same facts may be asserted of moral as 
of spiritual truths. We have a conscience — an 
innate or internal revelation of the distinctions 
between right and wrong. All moral laws are 
passed for judgment to this internal sense before 
we recognize them as binding. No law can be 
authoritative unless we acknowledge it to be in 
accordance with our internal sense of right, or 
else enunciated by authority which we recognize 
to be still more infallible. A command which 
we know comes from God, is imperative. No 
conscientious conviction must stand against it. 
And a law which has the sanction of mankind 
generally must be obeyed even by one whose 
moral judgment may be arrayed against it, for 
the reason that education, prejudice, or a natural 
deficiency of moral sense may warp private judg- 
ment, and render its decision erroneous. 






ORIGIN OF MORAL LAWS. 27 

Conscience is the law of the will. Whatever 
we determine to do is first submitted to this law, 
which gives instant judgment. If its injunctions 
are violated, remorse follows. Implicit obedience 
is rewarded by the pleasing consciousness of duty 
performed. But u the accuracy of all judicial 
sentences depends on the capacity, the knowl- 
edge, and the patience of the judge. Who will 
claim for the judge within his own bosom the 
possession of these qualifications in a perfect, or 
even in an eminent degree ? " It is for these 
reasons we have laws. 

Religious laws issue from what are believed 
to be the mandates of God. Whether they come 
direct from God, or not, they are the elimination 
of the collective wisdom and virtue of ages. 
They are passed upon by the councils of good and 
wise men — to the conscience of each one of whom 
they are in turn submitted. They are then made 
imperative for the government of all consciences ; 
and it is right that they should be so considered. 

The laws of the Christian Bible, independent 
of the sacred origin claimed for them, are sanc- 
tioned by the practice and wisdom of ages, and as 
such, are overwhelmingly authoritative to all who 
live in Christian lands. 



28 



ORIGIN OF MOKAL LAWS. 



The laws of the Koran, or Moslem bible, are 
the elimination of Oriental morals and ideas of 
right and wrong ; and to the Mohammedan form 
of civilization, should, doubtless, be held as au- 
thoritative. 

The moral laws which govern the followers 
of Confucius have passed through a similar cru- 
cible of heathen morality — the collective con- 
sciences of successive generations — and should be 
authoritative where they are recognized as truths. 

"We come now to civil law, which originates 
on the same principle. Men of probity and intel- 
ligence are selected to counsel together, and to 
frame a system of laws for the government of 
man in his social relations. The sense of right 
of the individual must submit to this system, for 
it is but one conscience against many. Reason 
teaches that the decision of the latter must be 
right, wherever it is possible for such a conflict 
to arise. 

The " freedom of conscience" of which we 
boast is not such perfect freedom as many are 
led to believe. It only accords us the right to 
be ruled in our conduct by our conscientious 
convictions, within prescribed limits. These are 



SELF-REFUTED ARGUMENTS. 29 

bound, by regulations which restrain all, from the 
commission of deeds which are condemned as 
crimes by the universal conscience. 



CHAPTER II. 



Argument — Special objections to the doctrine of innate 
ideas reviewed. 



Inborn capacity essential to the knowledge of some truths — 
If absent, the truth remains unknown — Universal assent 
not necessary to prove innate knowledge — Instinct and 
Reason allied — Conscience denned. 

One of the propositions of "Locke in his argu- 
ment against the existence of innate knowledge, 
is that there can be no necessity for it ; that man, 
" barely by the use of his natural faculties, can 
attain to all the knowledge he has, without the 
use of any innate idea." 

If this proposition is meant to exclude all 
inherent or introspective knowledge from being 
considered as " natural faculties," as is evidently 
intended, it is clearly erroneous. There are many 
truths of which we have knowledge, that cannot 
be acquired by excogitative means. The truth 



30 SELF-REFUTED ARGUMENTS. 

must be spontaneously evolved in the mind, with- 
out the aid of external means, or it remains 
unknown ; for there are no external evidences to 
impart the knowledge. This may be said of sev- 
eral spiritual truths. There are other truths 
which are natural gifts, but which only signify 
their existence in the mind when submitted to 
the test of external evidence, — for it is that which 
calls them into being. But if the innate quality 
of perception or consciousness of these truths is 
absent, even external evidences fail to convey 
them, and they are never known. The individual 
so constituted may exercise his sensations, his per- 
ceptions, and every faculty of his mind in the 
endeavor to acquire a knowledge of these truths, 
but they refuse entrance into his mind. He has 
not the innate quality which gives perception to 
this knowledge, therefore he cannot acquire it. 

If it can be shown that the premises upon 
which the arguments against innate ideas rest are 
incorrect in one particular, it follows that the 
entire theory, however laborious it may be, is 
radically defective. Kecognized systems of men- 
tal philosophy are elaborate and verbose. Their 
prosy proportions alone give them a certain 



SELF-REFUTED ARGUMENTS. 31 

weight with those whose object is to accept some 
philosophy of mind as admitted authority, rather 
than to submit it to careful analysis. 

A knowledge of colors is frequently alluded to 
by Locke and others, in illustration of the manner 
in which they suppose all knowledge to be ac- 
quired. 

Now it is a well-known fact that many per- 
sons have a natural faculty for the discrimination 
of various shades of color, that others find it 
impossible to acquire. More than that, some per- 
sons find it impossible to distinguish any of the 
varieties of coloring. All objects seem to be 
either black or white, or having shades which 
verge into one or the other. They can mark no 
difference between green and blue or crimson and 
purple. The most striking contrasts are lost to 
them, or else they have but a vague impression 
of the difference in color. They are without the 
natural or innate faculty of discrimination, and it 
cannot be acquired. Others have the innate qual- 
ity of delicate perception of the different shades 
of color. It is'developed and exercised spontane- 
ously — but it is only external tests that start this 
innate power into action. 



32 SELF-REFUTED ARGUMENTS. 

The entire series of arguments against the 
existence of innate knowledge are liable to the 
same objections, and are insufficient to satisfy a 
common-sense inquiry. Locke's mathematical 
illustrations are baseless, for we know that some 
persons are naturally deficient, and cannot be 
taught the most ordinary rules of arithmetic. 

A member of Congress from Kentucky, known 
to the author, could not compute the interest on 
the most ordinary sums. He was obliged to rely 
on others for accuracy in the most trifling calcu- 
lations. On the other hand, the power of com- 
puting numbers belongs to other minds as an 
innate quality. It asserts itself without instruc- 
tion or learning, and is not acquired. An extra- 
ordinary instance of this character will be related 
in one of the ensuing chapters. 

An otherwise intelligent negro woman, the 
author's housekeeper for many years, before the 
recent war, could not be taught to count beyond 
ten. A dozen eggs in a basket were estimated by 
"Aunt Betty" as "ten eggs and two eggs, 
Missus." * She could not be made to comprehend 
the most simple sum in addition or subtraction. 
The faculty could not be educated, because she 
was born without it. 



SELF-REFUTED ARGUMENTS. 33 

Locke assumes that to prove a quality of mind 
to be innate, we must establish it to be universal. 
The reverse is the truth. We prove certain kinds 
of knowledge to be innate by selecting exceptional 
cases, where the inborn knowledge is deficient, or 
is altogether wanting, and contrast it with the 
same power in others in whom the natural faculty 
is developed in an extraordinary degree. In one 
case, education is powerless to develop what is not 
present. Wheat cannot be made to grow on 
naked rock. In the other case, the intuitive 
knowledge asserts its power independent of edu- 
cation. It cannot be repressed. 

It is supposed by Locke and others, that a 
belief in the existence of God, and the immortal- 
ity of the soul, cannot be instinctive or the result 
of an innate impression, because of the fact that 
there are Atheists, who deny both. Therefore, 
the " universal assent," which they make to be an 
essential quality of intuitive knowledge, being 
absent, they assume that the doctrine of innate 
principles is refuted. 

With as much propriety we might assert that 

sight is not a natural faculty, because some are 

born blind. There are characters written on the 
3 



34 INSTINCT AND REASON ALLIED. 

mind of man "by the finger of God," which 
Locke denies, but they are not written with the 
same degree of legibility on all alike, or in the 
same profusion. Some are more favored ; some 
less ; and the poor idiot seems by God's good 
providence to be left destitute of all mental 
impressions, and without the susceptibility of 
acquiring them by education. 

The instinct of animals is supposed to have no 
relation to the intelligence with which God has 
gifted human nature. This belief is not sustained 
by the observations of the student of nature. It 
is probable that man has instinct in common with 
the lower order of animals, but to this is super- 
added a superior reasoning power, which marks 
him as being preeminently favored by the Creator, 
and which enables him to hold all living creatures 
in subjection. 

It is hard to define the line which separates 
reason from instinct, especially if we deny to the 
lower animals all reasoning power, and allow such 
intelligence as they exhibit to be considered only 
as the manifestations of instinct. These doctrines 
are too vague and undefined to.be reliable. 



KNOWLEDGE OF RIGHT AND WRONG. 35 

Why should reasoning power be denied to all 
living creatures with the exception of man ? We 
are not able to see that it has any essential bearing 
on the question of man's preeminence or his 
immortality ; and it certainly cannot be reconciled 
to the many anecdotes of sagacity and cunning on 
the part of inferior animals which are recorded in 
natural history, and which occur in every one's 
experience. 

It seems probable that animals do reason, and 
that they have their natural gifts as well as man, 
either more or less limited, but in all cases infi- 
nitely beneath man's ordinary capacity. As a com- 
pensation, however, we find that, in proportion to 
the limitation of these reasoning powers, they 
retain in their exercise a nearer approach to the 
quality of mere instinct in man and animals — 
which is, that it seldom makes a mistake. 

Instinctive knowledge of wrong-doing or nat- 
ural conscientiousness is liable to the same differ- 
ences of development that attend other native 
powers of the mind. In some it is almost, or 
entirely, wanting. It cannot be implanted by cul- 
ture when entirely absent, no more than a knowl- 



36 KNOWLEDGE OF RIGHT AND WRONG. 

edge of colors can be implanted in those who are 
without the natural power of discrimination. 

Criminal records abound in cases which seem 
to realize the condition of "total depravity." 
Every one is familiar with the peculiarities of 
those who are affected by an unconquerable pro- 
pensity to steal. It is charitably considered to be 
a mania, and is dignified with the technical name 
Kleptomania. No education can eradicate it, 
because it results from the natural constitution of 
the mind. 

Like other natural qualities, conscientiousness 
is susceptible of modification, misdirection or 
partial suppression, in a great degree, by educa- 
tion, and the manner of life of the individual. 
But, when naturally predominant, it will resist evil 
teaching, and keep its possessor just and merciful, 
according to the form of civilization in which he 
has growth. Whether Christian, pagan or Mo- 
hammedan, he will be above his fellows in every 
good quality. 

The argument that cruel and hideous religious 
rites are practised by certain uncivilized nations, 
is only negative evidence against there being an 
instinctive knowledge of right and wrong. The 



KNOWLEDGE OF RIGHT AND WRONG. 37 

mass of mankind are naturally prone to evil, and 
are wanting in conscientiousness. A man who is 
naturally good is an exception, even in enlightened 
communities. The advent of civil war, when all 
restraint is removed, develops this fact. The 
lurking devil in man's nature then asserts itself, 
and atrocities are perpetrated without remorse 
which chill the blood with horror. 

It is at such times that the native nobility of 
the human being is most easily recognized. The 
man who is gifted with a large share of the in- 
stinctive principle of right needs no restraint. 
He refuses to yield to the demoniacal influences 
which seize his fellows, and remains true to the 
monitor which God has implanted within him. 
He needs no terror of future punishment or 
hope of future reward to enable him to discharge 
his duty to God, to himself and his fellow-man. 

But we need not dwell on these arguments 
when simple and cogent facts which are known 
to every body point to the same conclusions. It 
is, perhaps, in the experience of every individual 
that his conscience has reproved him for some act, 
before he even knew what the word religion 
meant. The infant in the nurse's arms is sensi- 



38 KNOWLEDGE OF RIGHT AND WRONG. 

ble of wrong-doing even before it is possible that 
the knowledge can be imparted. And, finally, it 
is known to every one that some crimes are 
heinous beyond all others, because they are unnatu- 
ral — that is because they revolt the universal con- 
science — and not because we are taught to so 
regard them. 

The foregoing views may be too practical to 
commend themselves to the astute conceptions of 
those who delight in following abstractions. We 
do not aim to accord with the hypercritical re- 
quirements of professed psj^chologists, but with 
the experience of every-day life, and with the 
capacity of ordinary comprehension and ordinary 
common-sense. 

The train of thought which we have followed 
leads to the conclusion, that all knowledge which 
is spontaneously evolved in the mind — all truth 
of which it becomes cognizant without the aid of 
extraneous means — may be properly considered 
as innate. 

If this view is correct it follows that we may 
estimate as inborn : — 

1. A knowledge of the Deity. This is im- 






COMMON-SENSE CONCLUSIONS. 39 

pressed on the mind naturally, but is confirmed 
and strengthened by external evidence. 

2. A knowledge of the immortality of the 
soul. This is barely an intuition. It is not sup- 
ported by any cognizable fact. 

3. A knowledge of our own being. 

4. A knowledge of right and wrong. 

It is probable that there are many other truths 
of which the mind has an inherent conception; 
but as they are capable of being acquired in a 
great measure by the exercise of perception and 
reflection alone, and as they do not bear on the 
subject-matter of this work (which follows in its 
proper order), we will not attempt to dwell upon 
them, or even enumerate them. It cannot be 
doubted, however, that the great mass of knowable 
truths are gathered to the mind through the aid 
of external evidences, and by the exercise of sen- 
sation and reflection alone. 



CHAPTEE III. 

Argument. — 1. When life of the body commences. 2. Pos- 
sible distinction between vegetative life and conscious 
life. 3. No evidence of conscious existence previous to 
birth. We cannot say when it first dawned on our minds, 
" We live and have being." 4. Visionary theories. 

5. Physiological distinctions before and after birth. 

6. Distinct life the immediate result of conception. 

7. The induction of premature labor unjustifiable, with- 
out warrant of necessity. 

§ 1. We slowly realize life while emerging 
from embryon organization into full development. 
This realization is of imperceptible growth. We 
cannot fix the moment of its inception by any 
effort of memory. Life in the womb is a blank ; 
and a period of post-natal existence precedes the 
time when the mind becomes capable of the full 
conception of its own being. 

§ 2. It has been assumed in some systems of 
mental philosophy, that the unborn infant has 
ideas which arise from the sensation of hunger. 
How this assertion can be demonstrated as a truth, 
we are unable to imagine. It is probably with- 



WHEN LIFE COMMENCES. 41 

out foundation. The desire for food and warmth, 
immediately asserts itself after birth. But lucre 
is no evidence that ideas, or sensations on which 
ideas depend, precede the birth. The living fibre 
of the body of an unborn infant asserts its vege- 
tative life. Like the sensitive plant, it declares its 
irritability, and shrinks from the touch while still 
within the womb. But thought, perception, and 
probably sensation, are dormant. No process of 
sophistical reasoning can make it seem possible 
that the unborn infant, or partially formed foetus, 
knows that it lives. There is no evidence on 
which to base a plausible assumption of this char- 
acter. 

§ 3. We are even without an intuitive im- 
pression of any form of previous existence. The 
most refined and perfect human organism, from 
its origin to its termination, is utterly oblivious 
of any form of ante-natal life. No suggestion of 
science, no instinctive perception, or revelation, 
or inspiration points in that direction. The idea 
has indeed been suggested in pagan philosophy 
— in the vagaries of Pythagoras, and in the fan- 
cies of Brahmin and Buddhist superstition and 
ignorance. The absurd doctrine of the transmi- 



42 WHEN LIFE COMMENCES. 

gration of the soul, having no foundation in any- 
thing that is taught by instinct or common-sense, 
is unworthy of discussion. It is only of interest 
because it numbers among its adherents so large 
a proportion of the human family. It is still the 
religion of India, and of Eastern and Central Asia. 
This mystical system of Metempsychosis, which 
teaches that the soul may pass from one body to 
another, and may take up its temporary residence 
in animals, comprises above 400,000,000 of fol 
lowers. 

§ 4. The Mosaic declaration that a God breathed 
into man's nostrils the breath of life, and he be- 
came a living soul," has been made the basis of 
many visionary theories. It has been said to im- 
ply that until breath enters the lungs, there is no 
soul or separate life. A rational view cannot be 
affected by an assumption which implies three 
debatable points: — 1st. The fact of the declara- 
tion having been made at all. 2d. If made, 
whether by divine authority. 3d. If by divine 
authority, whether it is clearly susceptible of the 
interpretation put upon it. 

§ 5. Science teaches that the supply of oxy- 
genized blood is only transferred from the placenta 



WHEN LIFE COMMENCES. 43 

to the lungs, in the new-born infant, in the act of 
breathing. The life-current is only directed to 
and from new channels by the closing of a valve 
in the heart, the expansion of the lungs, and the 
induction of involuntary respiratory movements, 
which never cease during life. The infant parts 
from one set of organs, only to accept another in 
compensation, which are essential to its new form 
of existence. The placenta is the medium of com- 
munication between the parent and the unborn 
child. There are a variety of opinions as to the 
exact nature of the office which it performs, and 
on the manner in which it is executed ; but it is 
admitted that the blood of the foetus is, with re- 
gard to its formation and circulation, uncon- 
nected with, and independent of the parent, ex- 
cept that the matter of which it is formed must 
be derived maternally. 

§ 6. The unborn infant lives from the moment 
of its inception. The germ has all the elements 
of the man. It has life, because its vivification im- 
parts life. Its voluntary destruction is therefore 
murder. Murder means to destroy life. It is 
made lawful to mur ier inferior animals, because it 
is a necessity of our nature. But to take the life 



44 ON ABORTION. 

of a human creature, unless absolutely essential to 
self-preservation, is a crime against the laws of 
God, nature and man. 

§ 7. The induction of premature labor, with- 
out the warrant of some great and pressing neces- 
sity to the life of the mother, is clearly a crime of 
magnitude, because it violates every instinctive 
principle of right, as well as the inculcations of 
religion. Its perpetration by a hireling, for 
money, at the solicitation of the mother, is incon- 
ceivably infamous. The wretch sinks to the level 
of an assassin who murders helpless sleep and in- 
nocence. The victim can make no protest, no 
cry, or appeal for mercy. 

The fear of shame and disgrace may palliate, 
in some degree, the offence on the part of the 
woman. But the lust of gold, which incites the 
other to its commission, is only adding a less to a 
greater crime. 

The plea that life has not been made evident 
to the mother's senses cannot be tolerated as a 
justification for adverse interference, in the ear- 
liest moments of foetal life. If it was considered 
a crime to kill a butterfly you could not escape 
the penalty on the plea that the butterfly you 






ON ABORTION. 45 

killed was in its chrysalis state, or that it had no 
wings. If declared to be a crime to destroy a 
rose, you surely would not be permitted to destroy 
unfolded buds ad libitum. 

The procuring abortion was cultivated as an 
art in the degenerate days of the Roman Empire. 
Ladies practised it as much to preserve personal 
symmetry, as to escape maternal cares. Juvenal 
denounced the practice in his Satires; and Ter- 
tullian, the Christian writer of Carthage, writing 
on the same subject says : " Christians are now so 
far from homicide, that with them it is utterly un- 
lawful to make away with a child in the womb, 
when Nature is in deliberation about the man. 
To kill a child before it is born, is to commit 
murder in advance ; for we Christians look upon 
the ovum as a man in embryo." 

The possible distinction between mere vege- 
tative life and life with its spiritual connection, is 
only hypothetical. The precise period when body 
and soul become united, or whether they can exist 
separately at all, are problems beyond solution by 
mere human research. If the precepts of reli- 
gion are not accepted as truths, whatever they 
may be, we need not expect to reach the truth by 



46 MODES OF DEATH. 

the unaided efforts of reason. Those who pre- 
sume to violate a natural instinct of right, on the 
ground of their supposed elucidation of this mys- 
tery, do so at their peril. 



CHAPTER IT. 



Argument. — 1. Definition of death. Forms of death. 
2. Instinctive belief in future life. 3. Reason incom- 
petent to reach absolute knowledge. 

§1. What is Death? 

It is an apparent cessation of conscious exist- 
ence ; followed by the gradual dispersion of the 
component parts, and obliteration of the organ- 
ized being in which life had existed. 

Pathologists enumerate a variety of modes in 
which life takes its departure. Bichat, in his 
Recherches sur la vie et la mort, declares that all 
forms of death begin either in the head, heart, or 
lungs. Other pathologists multiply these three 
forms into various modes, to which they give dis- 
tinctive names. We will omit the technical 
terms, as well as the various definitions of the 



MODES OF DEATH. 47 

special modes of dying, of these writers, as they 
can be of little interest to the non-medical reader, 
and are not specially pertinent to the general pur- 
pose of this chapter. It is probable, however, that 
all forms of death depend on the cessation of the 
vital functions of the brain and heart ; and that 
it always occurs either primarily in the brain — 
the heart continuing to act for a certain period 
after consciousness ceases; or primarily in the 
heart — consciousness and intelligence existing for 
an appreciable interval after the heart ceases to 
palpitate. 

The diseases, injuries and deprivations which 
incidentally occasion these forms of dissolution, 
are a legion in number. But besides these, is the 
inevitable natural process of dissolution and decay, 
which, in a given time, overcomes vitality, and 
terminates all forms of organic life. 

The living body is composed of evanescent 
materials, which can only maintain their organic 
cohesion for a certain period. When that time 
elapses, without the intervention of any of the 
innumerable incidental causes of death, natural 
decay ensues. The planetary tendency of the 



48 INNATE BELIEF IN FUTURITY. 

sentient being asserts itself; and it is slowly dis- 
solved back again into its constituent elements of 
earth, air and water, of which it was originally 
composed. "We will treat of the evidences of ac- 
tual death, hereafter. 

§ 2. Instinctive belief in future life. — We 
have endeavored to show that we are oblivious, in 
this life, of having existed in any previous form. 

In like manner we are devoid of all conscious- 
ness or inherent knowledge of the form of future 
existence, to which we may be translated ; — but 
there is ever present an indefinable impression 
and intuitive conviction that we will be so trans- 
lated, and will always live. 

§ 3. But whether we lived before, or will live 
hereafter, or w r hat form of life we will assume, 
after the death of the body, if any, cannot be de- 
termined by the exercise of our reasoning faculties 
alone. 

If we discard Revelation, and set aside the im- 
pressions of instinct, it is useless to speculate on 
either problem, with the expectation of arriving 
at any absolute truth. The most patient research, 



REASON IMPOTENT. 49 

the most profound thought, on these themes, only 
lead the mind into a bewildering labyrinth of 
conjectures, and there leave it. Nothing more. 

We can assert nothing as being within our in- 
dividual knowledge, because nothing tangible, or 
pertaining to what we suppose may be our future 
life, can be made to come within the grasp of 
human prescience. 

That form of modern Psychology which is 
based on supposed communion with departed 
souls, we regard as being based on mere phan- 
tasms of the imagination. Many facts will be re- 
lated in forth-coming chapters, in substantiation 
of this position. Spiritualism, as it is called, is 
only a rehash of doctrines which have prevailed 
among the credulous and superstitious of all ages. 
A thorough knowledge of the symptoms and ex- 
traordinary visions which attend certain abnormal 
conditions of the nervous system, is all that is 
necessary to dispel the illusory pretensions of this 
system of belief. 

It must be admitted, however, that eminently 
gifted minds have yielded credence to the reality 
of these phantasms. It is easy to believe that 
Socrates, many of the early Christian Fathers, 



50 BELIEF BASED ON ILLUSIONS. 

Swedenborg, and others of acknowledged abil- 
ity and piet}^ have been influenced by honest, 
though mistaken convictions. The lesser lights 
of modern spiritualism are entitled to the same 
charitable construction. 

All of these relate particulars of visitations 
from the spirit world, from which they gather 
reliable information of the future condition and 
destiny of the soul. Sometimes these fancied 
teachings accord with Revelation ; but the general 
tendency of the system is to throw doubt on the au- 
thenticity of the Bible and to encourage infidelity. 

" Man comes into this world in weakness, 
And cries for help to man — for feeble is he, 
And many are his foes. Thirst, hunger, nakedness, 
Diseases infinite within his frame ; 
Without — inclemency, the wrath of seasons, 
Famines, pests, plagues ; devouring elements, 
Earthquakes beneath — the thunders rolling o'er him 
Age and infirmity on either hand, 
And Death, who shakes the certain dart behind him — 
These surely one might deem were ills sufficient. 
Man thinks not so. On his own race he turns 
The force of all his talents — exquisite — 
To shorten the short interval, by art, 
Which nature left us. Fire and sword 
Are in his hand, and in his heart, machinations 
For speeding of perdition. Half the world 
Down the steep gulf of dark futurity 
Push off their fellows — pause upon the brink 
And then drop after." 5 






CHAPTER V. 

Argument. — 1. Actual death not so easily determined by any 
sign short of putrefaction or dismemberment. 2. Ab- 
sence of visible signs of life, no evidence. 3. Premature 
interments. Indubitable proof of death. 4. Restoration 
in cases of supposed death. 5. The hasty use of ice rep- 
rehensible. 6. Rules which should govern inquests. 

§ 1. What are the evidences of actual death ? 

It may be said that the question is easily an- 
swered in one word— putrescence. 

But as chemical decomposition of the body 
may be postponed by various causes when death 
is unquestionably present ; and as putrescence of 
the body is not often allowed to declare itself be- 
fore the body is committed to the grave ; and as 
putrescence of matters connected with the body 
may be easily mistaken for decay of the body 
itself, we must pause, and examine the question 
more deliberately. 

It is of interest to every living person. All 
are called upon, sooner or later, to officiate in dis- 
posing of the remains of those who have been dear 



52 EVIDENCES OF ACTUAL DEATH. 

in life, and all, in turn, must expect to be the ob- 
jects of the same kind offices from surviving 
friends. 

§ 2. The mere absence of the visible signs of 
life in a body does not necessarily imply that it 
has ceased permanently. Breathing may have 
ceased ; the pulsations of the heart may be stilled ; 
what is called mortuus rigor may have stiffened 
the limbs ; the surface may be cold ; a slight odor 
of decomposition may offend the smell, — and yet 
all these appearances may be deceptive. 

The vegetative power of the body may still 
remain intact, and some unexpected movement of 
the still living fibre, may stir the sources of vital- 
ity, and once more set the machine in motion. 

§ 3. The records of medical science teem with 
such instances of suspended life. Numberless ex- 
humations have developed the horrible fact, that 
life had returned to the entombed remains, only 
to be extinguished again in the hopeless silence 
of the grave. 

The establishment of the putrefactive process 
in the organs and fibre of the body is, indeed, 



SUSPENDED LIFE. 53 

indubitable evidence of actual death, and it is the 
only positive evidence, except dismemberment. 
But we must be sure not to be misled by the 
fetor arising from the decomposition of the effete 
matter or secretions which adhere to the body. 
These may give out a cadaverous odor, while the 
integrity of the bodily fibre remains intact. 

§ 4. Many nervous disorders simulate death. 
But the effects produced by certain poisons and 
inhalations, and the exhaustion consequent on any 
serious disease or injury, will produce the same 
appearances. 

Precautions against the possibility of prema- 
ture interment have sometimes been ordered by 
law. The results, on some occasions, have been 
startling enough. In 1829 an ordinance of the 
city of ISTew York required that all bodies fur- 
nished for interment should be kept above ground 
for eight days. An opening was left in the head 
of each coffin, and bells, attached by strings to the 
limbs of the body, were arranged in such a manner 
as to ring on the least motion. 

Out of 1,200 bodies so treated, life reappeared 
in six — one out of every two hundred. If the 



54 RESTORED TO LIFE. 

period of trial had been prolonged until decay of 
the body asserted its presence in every case, the 
proportion of restorations might have been larger. 
This statement appears in several publications, and 
we presume it is authentic. 

Regulations of the same character at other 
places seem to have been more barren of results. In 
Berlin no recoveries were recorded ; but, pending 
the experiment, it is probable that unusual care 
was taken to ascertain that life had positively de- 
parted before certificates to that effect were given 
by private medical attendants. 

An ordinance of this character should be in 
force permanently in all large communities — espe- 
cially during the prevalence of epidemics. If no 
other salutary effect were produced, it would, at 
least, induce more caution on the part of profes- 
sionals, who would not relish being convicted of 
such culpable carelessness or ignorance as to con- 
sign a living body to the undertaker. 

§ 5. The custom of immersing or inclosing: a 
recently lifeless body in ice — which has become 
almost universal in this country, during the preva- 
lence of warm weather — is certainly reprehensible. 



HASTY USE OF ICE CONDEMNED. 55 

If a vital spark remained, it would surely be ex- 
tinguished by the freezing process to which the 
body is subjected. It is the part of prudence to 
await the proof of actual death. The medical at- 
tendant's dictum should not be considered as suf- 
ficient, in the absence of the absolute evidences of 
death to which we have alluded, as it has hap- 
pened that bodies have given signs of life after 
being mortally slashed with the dissecting-knife. 

There are not manjr cases where a reasonable 
doubt of actual death can be entertained. All 
mortal injuries, violent dismemberments, and ir- 
reparable destruction of vital organs, are in them- 
selves proof sufficient. The subject, however, 
should have the full benefit of the slightest doubt 
that can be reasonably entertained. 

§ 6. Necroscopical Examinations. — Inquests 
in cases of sudden death are often conducted hur- 
riedly. The first duty of the coroner, and those 
who conduct the examination, is to establish the 
fact beyond all cavil that it is actual — not seem- 
ing — death that is before them. Before the dis- 
secting-knife is thrust into the body, let it be 
known that it is really a post-mortem dissection 



56 RULES FOR INQUESTS. 

in which the operator is about to engage. Au- 
topsies have a fascination for some medical men. 
They seize upon opportunities for indulging their 
passion to slash the human form, with unseemly 
haste and avidity. 

The rule should prevail, not to dissect at all 
unless it be essential to subserve the ends of jus- 
tice, or unless in the legitimate pursuit of scientific 
investigation, which has for its object the general 
good. The body should always be submitted to 
careful medical inspection ; undue haste may result 
in a case of involuntary homicide on the part of 
the operator. 

It is related that the Cardinal Espinosa, prime 
minister under Philip the second of Spain, "died, 
as was supposed, after a short illness. His rank 
entitled him to be embalmed. His body was 
opened for that purpose. The lungs and heart 
were just brought into view, when the latter was 
seen to heat. The Cardinal, awakening at the fatal 
moment, had strength to seize the knife of the 
anatomist before he expired." 

And here is another memorable lesson : 

" On the -23d of September, 1763, the Abbe 
Prevost, the French novelist, was seized with a fit 



LIFE DISCOVERED BY THE KNIFE. 57 

in the forest of Chantilly. The body was found 
and conveyed to the residence of the nearest cler- 
gyman. It was regarded as a case of apoplexy. 
But the local authorities, desiring to be satisfied, 
ordered the body to be opened, and examined. 
During the process, the poor Abbe uttered a cry 
of agony. It was too late." 

It is said of a well-known and distinguished 
surgeon of New York, now deceased, that in the 
earlier years of his practice he mortally mutilated 
a patient with the dissecting-knife. The sick 
man was supposed to have died from the effects 
of some disease of the throat. The surgeon, curi- 
ous to elucidate some doubtful question as to its 
nature, took occasion to open the throat. The 
blood began to flow ; animation returned to the 
body, but the injury done was irreparable. Life 
was extinguished almost as soon as restored. 

Other instances of accidental restoration to life 
have been more fortunate. It is on record in the 
Acts of Parliament of Paris, that a lady recently 
married against her will, sickened, and, it was 
supposed, died. Her body was placed in a vault. 
A young man whom she loved, and who had a 
tender attachment for her, found his way inside 



58 LIFE KESTORED FROM THE GRAVE. 

the vault, with the intention of taking a last fond 
look at the remains. 

His endearments stirred the latent life still in 
the body. The lady recovered and fled to Eng- 
land with her lover. Yenturing to return to 
France, the lady was met and recognized by her 
former husband. He sought to recover possession 
of his wife by law. But the young couple eluded 
the process and escaped again to England. 



CHAPTEE VI. 



Argument — 1. Causes of death-trance; possibly epidemic. 
2. Narrative of Vampirism. 3. The Vampire a subject 
of death-trance. 4. Mayo's theory. 5. Marvels of par 
tial death-trance. 6. Rational explanations. 

§ 1. Death-trance> which is the name given 
to some of these cases of apparent death, may su- 
pervene primarily, or it may follow as the 
sequence of any form of disease. It is more liable 
to follow sudden and severe attacks of illness. 
Violent nervous disorders tend specially to its 
production. According to various authorities, 
hysteria, epilepsy, catalepsy and a host of disor- 



DEATH-TKANCE EPIDEMIC. 59 

ders having their seat in the brain and nerves, 
may give rise to symptoms which approach, and 
sometimes develop into, perfect death- trance. 

It has oeen supposed that this species of trance 
may even prevail as an epidemic. It is true of 
other nervous disorders that sympathy, or some 
other unaccountable cause which may be specific 
in its nature, has a tendency to propagate and 
spread them among those who are in the immedi- 
ate vicinity of patients already seized. Religious 
delusions and frenzies, which have their birth in 
such disorders, are undoubtedly spread by some 
species of mental contagion. The " Convulsion- 
ists " of France, which originated in 1727, and 
whose contortions were supposed to be produced 
by some miraculous influence arising from the 
grave of the Abbe Paris ; and the " Jerkists," who 
had their day in Kentucky and Tennessee in the 
beginning of the present century, are examples 
of this species of nervous contagion. 

For these analogous reasons it has been sug- 
gested that death-trance also may be propagated 
by contagion. 

On this theory Mayo attempts to explain the 
supernatural features of that form of death-trance 
which has been called Vampirism. 



60 VAMPIRISM. 

§ 2. The curious superstitions connected with 
vampirism still prevail in Russia and other 
eastern sections of Europe. The popular idea is, 
that " a vampire is a dead body which continues 
to live in the grave, which it leaves at night for 
the purpose of sucking the blood of the living, 
whereby it is preserved and nourished instead of 
being decomposed like other dead bodies." 

It was the belief of the poor people of 
Bohemia, who were afflicted with the visitation 
during the last century, that those who were visi- 
ted by the Yampire, always became Yampires in 
turn. It was noticed that all who had been im- 
pressed with the belief that their sleep had been 
disturbed by the terrible visitation, generally 
passed into death-trance, or actual death, as the 
case might be. 

That evident life of some kind was present in 
the body is shown by the fact that it became 
customary to transfix the bodies of all suspected 
Yampires with a stake, so that actual death should 
be ensured. 

Bodies of suspected Yampires which were 
already buried were exhumed from time to time, 
to be submitted to the barbarous thrust. Many 






VAMPIRISM. 61 

were free from all signs of decomposition. The 
blood flowed freely — the fibres twitched, and, in 
one case related by Erasmus Francisci, the poor 
wretch uttered a shriek when the stake pierced 
his body, although he had been buried in the earth 
for " a long time." 

In a district of Wallachia, commissioners were 
appointed by the government to superintend the 
disinterment of the bodies of all those who had 
been complained of as Yampires. It was deemed 
necessary to exhume and pierce these bodies to 
allay the terror and excitement of the people, who 
were every day being seized with this singular 
malady, and who always ascribed its origin to the 
ghostly visitation of some one already dead, or 
apparently dead, with the same disease. The 
commission, which was composed of three regi- 
mental surgeons, a lieutenant-colonel and sub- 
lieutenant, furnished a report of their operations 
which bears date "June 7, 1732. Meduegna, 
near Belgrade." They give the names of eleven 
persons, whose bodies had been under ground for 
various periods of time ranging from ten to 
ninety days, in whom no sign of decay appeared, - 
although adjoining bodies, of persons dead from 



62 VAMPIRISM. 

other diseases, and buried within the same space 
of time, were undergoing rapid decomposition. 
"We will relate but one of the cases as contained 
in the report, as that will suffice to convey an idea 
of the condition in which all the bodies were 
found which furnished the characteristics of the 
Vampire state. It should be understood, however, 
that actual death might have followed the condi- 
tion of death-trance in some cases which were 
suspected, but which were found in an advanced 
state of putrefaction. This is the first case rela- 
ted: 

"A woman of the name of Stana, twenty 
years of age, whose supposed death followed con- 
finement three months before. Her body was 
entirely free from all signs of decay. On thrust- 
ing the stake into her chest blood flowed, and was 
effused into the chest. The bowels presented the 
appearances of sound health. New skin and nails 
had formed." 

A mass of collateral evidence sustains the 
above statements ; so that we are led to the con- 
clusion that a person in the condition of death- 
trance cannot be injured by a total deprivation 
of air, and all other essentials of ordinary life, 



SPIRITUAL CONTAGION SUGGESTED. 63 

while the trance state continues. But the moment 
it ceases these deprivations are fatal, and actual 
death then succeeds. 

§ 3. Mayo's explanation of these seeming mys- 
teries is not satisfactory, but it approximates pos- 
sibility. If it be true, the marvels of modern Psy- 
chology, cease to be marvels. He assumes that 
the spirit or "immaterial" part of the trance vic- 
tim, or Vampire, whose living body reposes in the 
grave, does actually come in contact with the new 
victim, and imparts the disease while impressing 
him with the vision of the frightful visitation. 

But we know that there is no consciousness on 
the part of the spirit or soul of these trance sub- 
jects, during the pendency of the trance state. 
Those who have been restored to proper life and 
health universally declare the period of the trance 
to be a perfect and total blank. It seems incredi- 
ble that the soul or spirit could wander about to 
visit and impart its disorders to other spirits, liv- 
ing healthily in their proper human habitations, 
and yet be totally oblivious of its own acts, and 
even of the slightest consciousness of its own exist- 
ence. 



64 SELF-INDUCTION OF DEATH-TRANCE. 






§ 4. We have marvellous accounts of the pre- 
ternatural intelligence and prophetic powers of 
persons in whom partial death-trance can be 
induced ; and of others who have the rare power 
of voluntarily placing themselves, for a stipulated 
time, in the condition of perfect death-trance. 

Among the latter cases is the prominent one of 
Col. Townshend of England, which is attested by 
Drs. Gooch, Cheyne and Barnard — names well 
known in the annals of medicine. 

By a determined effort of the will, Col. Tow 
hend could suspend the action of the heart, an 
induce temporary death, or death-trance. His 
last experiment upon himself, which was made in 
the presence of medical witnesses, proved fatal. 

He, however, revived long enough to write 
his will, and give directions as to the disposition 
of his affairs, before he relapsed into a sleep which 
proved final. 



veil 
md 



§ 5. The student of medicine can understan 
the possibility of one's possessing the exceptional 
power of controlling the action of a muscle which 
ordinarily acts independent of the will. 

The heart is a hollow muscle, which expands 



, 



MARVEL OF SELF-RESTORATION. 65 

and contracts incessantly, independent of the will, 
from life's commencement to its close. It main- 
tains the current of blood in never-ending circuit 
through the innumerable channels and sluices of 
the body. But the faculty of controlling the ac- 
tion of this main-spring of life, even to the point 
of its total arrest, is undoubtedly developed in 
some rare and exceptional organizations. 

But the voluntary reawakening of the spirit 
to life ! How can mere volition, exercised before- 
hand, recall life to the body at a stated period ? 
" There's the rub." If the individual who is the 
subject of these spiritual vagaries, is perfectly 
oblivious of anything and everything connected 
with his own spirit, from the moment of its depart- 
ure or suspension, until it again signifies its pres- 
ence in the body, how can a mere observer be 
expected to trace it, or account for its aberrations ? 

If the subject cannot understand the power or 
process by which it is recalled, or by which it 
voluntarily resumes its residence in its corporeal 
habitation, how can we hope to explain it for 
him? 

It may be objected that one of our paradoxi- 



66 MARVEL OF SELF-RESTORATION. 

cal propositions involves an inaccuracy, — that it is 
inconsistent with the definition of actual death 
which gives decomposition, destruction of the vital 
organs, or dismemberment, as the only absolute 
proofs ; and that, inasmuch as the body resists the 
putrefactive process while in the condition of 
death-trance, it cannot be properly said to be 
dead. This is another mystery to which we 
invite attention. What is it that enables the body 
to resist decay, the blood to resist coagulation, 
and the animal tissue to maintain its integrity for 
an indefinite time, in any ordinary temperature, 
when every vital movement has ceased ? 

The objection, however, does not apply so 
pointedly. Life must be positively extinguished 
for a time, before the putrefactive process can be 
inaugurated. The supervention of the latter is 
only a proof that death had actually occurred at 
some previous time. The condition of death- 
trance, and the condition of the dead body pre- 
vious to its decomposition, are identical. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

Argument. — 1. Self induction of death-trance — Practised 
by the Hindoos — Feat of resurrection from the dead pos- 
sible and said to be performed. 2. These wonders give 
rise to spiritualistic heresies. 3. Susceptible of explana- 
tion ; if not, probably impostures. 4. Particular cases 
reviewed. 

§ 1. We have seen that it is possible for one 
to possess the rare faculty of controlling the heart's 
action, and thereby inducing death-trance. 

The nervous temperament of the East Indian 
seems best suited to this abnormal endowment. 
Among the Buddhist priests and jugglers of 
Hindostan this faculty is said to have been exer- 
cised for gain, as well as to impose on the super- 
stitions of the people. 

We have on record many seemingly well au- 
thenticated instances where religious zealots and 
ordinary jugglers have performed the feat of res- 
urrection from the dead. They go into the con- 
dition of death-trance — suffer themselves to be 



68 MIRACLES OF REVELATION EMULATED. 

inclosed in a coffin, and placed in the earth, as in 
ordinary burial, for a stipulated time. This 
period of time may embrace days, and, it has been 
asserted, even weeks. 

On being exhumed, the body slowly revives, 
— shakes off the cerements of the grave — and 
walks forth again in life. 

Many of these accounts are, without doubt, 
exaggerations, and some, perhaps, are fabricated. 
But beyond question, the power of passing vol- 
untarily into a state of seeming death, and. after 
a certain interval, of again assuming life, does 
belong to some rare and exceptional organiza- 
tions. 



§ 2. The miracles of Revelation are emulated 
by the astounding performances of these natural 
phenomena. The assumed or induced partial 
trance of the clairvoyant ; the magnetism of 
mind acting on mind ; the morbid derangements, 
excitations and misdirections of sensorial and 
nervous power which attend the whole family of 
nervous disorders ; and the super-intelligence, 
prescience, and prophetic power which they ex- 



RATIONAL EXPLANATIONS. 69 

hibit, are marvels which are equal to many which 
are recorded in Holy Writ. 

It is no wonder that they impress the credu- 
lous with the fancy that they are witnessing the 
workings of unseen spirits, and that the subject 
through whom they are manifested is considered 
to be only a " medium." 

As to the " unseen spirit" — of that there can 
be no doubt. But it is only the veritable and 
proper spirit of the " medium" which is indulg- 
ing in "fantastic tricks before high Heaven" — 
breaking ordinary bounds ; exhibiting extraor- 
dinary powers ; transposing the senses ; seeing 
with the forehead, or hearing with some motor 
nerve ; going out into, and identifying itself with, 
some other spirit for which it has affinity — feel- 
ing, knowing, and recollecting, just what is known, 
felt, and recollected by the companion spirit with 
which it is blended for a time. 

§ 3. The ghostly noises, voices, visions, and 
movements of inert matter, which are related as 
adjuncts of these marvellous exhibitions, exist 
only in the imagination, or they are produced by 
jugglery. If they are real, we have no rational 



70 RATIONAL EXPLANATIONS. 

explanation to offer. Writers on spiritualism, 
who are good and honest people, may offer ten 
thousand enigmatical propositions, founded on 
their belief or experience,* which are equally be- 
yond explanation, if they really are facts, and not 
deceptions. No such wonders as they relate have 
ever come under our observation. And if they 
do, we will await the explanation which science 
will furnish sooner or later. 

§ 4. Many of these seeming marvels, however, 
like the wonders of the Yampire superstitions, 
are traceable to the operations of ordinaiy natu- 
ral laws, and are susceptible of explanation. Why 
Miss Leutner, and others of her abnormally refined 
and delicate nervous organization, can see phos- 
phorescent forms over new-made graves, which 
refuse to be revealed to our coarser senses, we 
can understand. 

Why sensitive subjects of this class can gather 
knowledge from surrounding objects through 
unusual channels, we can understand. A deli- 
cate, impressional, magnetic nature will respond 
in a thousand ways to the action or the presence 
of the surroundings on which it irradiates, which 
are lost on our coarser nerves and natures. 



WHEKE DO GHOSTS GET CLOTHES? 71 

But why one person should be in visible pres- 
ence, in two distinct places, at one and the same 
time — as is related of a lady school-teacher by 
Robert Dale Owen,— that we cannot understand. 
Consequently we do not believe the statement to 
be true. There must have been deception some- 
where. 

Minus the habiliments, on one or other of 
the " Fetches," the story would seem more credi- 
ble, in view of the possible temporary separation 
of the spirit from the body, which, we have reason 
to believe, can occur. 

But to suppose that silk and linen, and shoes 
and stockings, will double themselves^ to fill the 
requirements of decency — even for a ghost — is 
too much for human credulity. 

All seeming mysteries and miraculous occur- 
rences, whether of ancient or modern origin, are 
rationally to be placed in the same category. It 
is no irreverence to assert that the mysteries of 
Revelation should not be excepted. When they 
are beyond the reach of explanation, we can 
neither affirm nor deny their possible supernatural 
origin, even if they happen within the range of 



72 WHERE DO GHOSTS GET CLOTHES? 

our own personal senses. We can only bear in 
mind that the senses are easily deceived. But 
when related by others, or handed down by tra- 
dition for our acceptance, another element of cau- 
tion intervenes. Besides the possibility of self- 
deception on the part of those witnesses, the cred- 
ibility of the testimony must be estimated. We 
can only helieve, if faith will let us, but we can- 
not know positively that they are truths. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Argument. — 1. Living prodigies not uncommon — " Blind 
Tom," a natural musician. 2. Holland, a natural matli- 
emetician. 3. Instinctive knowledge infallible. 4. Proof 
in lower animals. 5. Issue with the Mental Philosophy 
of Schools. 

§ 1. Wonders are only considered as wonder- 
ful when of rare occurrence. Everything con- 
nected with existence is mysterious and wonder- 
ful, but the attention is only diverted by that 
which is unusual. 

Mathematical and other prodigies solicit atten- 
tion so often that the lessons which they teach do 



MATHEMATICAL PRODIGY. 73 

not impress the metaphysical inquirer as much 
as do the more rare psychological aberrations. 

" Blind Tom," the African, is a born musician. 
In him, rhythm, melody, an exquisite appreciation 
and memory of, and capacity to arrange, harmoni- 
ous sounds are inborn. The super-excitation and 
development of his musical faculties seem to have 
absorbed every other intellectual energy, and, in 
consequence, he is below ordinary intelligence in 
other respects. 

§ 2. Monroe County, Kentucky, furnishes a 
mathematical prodigy, named Holland, who is 
also an epileptic. While but a boy (he is now 
about thirty years old) he could compute sums and 
solve problems instantaneously, and never make 
a mistake. 

Before he could read, write, or make figures, 
this faculty was plainly developed. Like others 
of his class, his remaining faculties of mind, if not 
deficient, will hardly reach mediocrity. 

No arithmetical proposition could puzzle him 
for an instant. He computed time intuitively, 
never forgetting to allow for the leap-year. Give 
him the exact date and time of your birth — he 



74 MATHEMATICAL PRODIGY. 

would look at the clock, shut his eyes for a 
moment, and, presto — at once you knew how 
many days, hours, minutes, or seconds you had 
lived. 

He only shut his eyes for a moment to read 
the answer, which, he said, " was written in his 
brain" in characters known only to himself. 

This was his statement while still a child. 
He could not tell how the answer came there, but 
he knew that it was correct, — and it always was 
correct. 

§3. Holland is an intuitive mathematician. 
He knows he cannot err. It is the gift of Nature. 
It comes direct from God. It is innate knowledge. 
If his knowledge of numbers was acquired by 
learning or education, he might fall into error, 
for then he would rely on unaided reason. But 
that which comes direct from God is incapable of 
error. 

The same kind of intuition implanted in all 
mankind says, u There is a God." If asked how 
we know so positively, we answer, like Holland, 
" We can't explain. We only know that we can- 
not err. It is written on our souls by the finger 
of God. It is impressed in our whole being, that 
there is a God, and that we shall always live." 



INSTINCT INFALLIBLE. 75 

God, when He made man, stamped this knowl- 
edge indelibly on his mind. Like the natural 
mathematician with his ready-made answer, we 
know it to be a truth, without taking the trouble 
of ciphering it out, even if we had the ability — 
which we have not. 

§ 4. This instinctive knowledge in all living 
creatures, has the same quality : it is incapable of 
error. Unlike man, with his boasted reason, the 
bird of passage never mistakes its proper course. 
The beast of the fields never mistakes its proper 
food. 

" Who made the spider parallels design 
Sure as Demoivre, without rule or line ? 
Who bids the stork, Columbus-like, explore 
Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before ? 

§ 5. These deductions, as we have already 
shown, are contrary to the received doctrines of 
Mental Philosophy, as taught in our schools, and 
averse to the views of some theologians, who de- 
clare the Bible to be the sole and only source of 
spiritual light. We may have to rely on the 
good Book for many other truths, which may be 
essential to our future well-being ; but we faww 
that God lives, and that He has gifted our souls 



76 ANOTHER SELF-REFUTED ARGUMENT. 

with indestructibility, and that some things are 
wrong, and others right, without the intervention 
of biblical revelation, or the teachings of prophetic 
inspirations. 

§ 6. One of the arguments of Locke against 
the existence of innate knowledge, is that "no 
child can know that four and three make seven, 
before being taught to count seven, and to get the 
idea of the proper term, by which to express the 
equality." 

Holland's power of computation is innate. 
His knowledge of language is, of necessity, ac- 
quired. As soon as he acquired the power of 
signifying terms, by sounds which could convey 
his ideas to others, he demonstrated his innate 
power of computation, and could then tell in lan- 
guage, what he knew before, — that four and three 
make seven. 

The facts which nature presents in plain char- 
acters cannot be successfully controverted by 
philosophers or logicians, however ingeniously 
they may reason, any more than they can be over 
slaughed by ecclesiastical decrees. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Argument. — 1. Without instinct and Revelation we can 
attain no knowledge of spiritual truth. 2. Certain forms 
of belief influenced by national characteristics. 3. Theism, 
or belief in one God, natural to mankind — Therefore, a 
Natural Religion — It includes a belief in future life. 
4. Paganism and Theism of synonymous signification 
— Recognition of God universal, at all periods. 

§ 1. Adhering to the intention with which 
we set out, we will still follow the light of reason 
alone, and ignore the illumination which Revela- 
tion may shed on the various doubtful questions 
connected with death, futurity, and the relations 
of body and spirit, which in turn present them- 
selves as pertinent to the subjects of which we 
treat. But if we discard both Instinct and Reve- 
lation, what are our sources of enlightenment ? 

We have five senses ; to these are presented 
all cognizable facts, on which we exercise our rea- 
soning faculties. We compare, analyze, and trace 
effects to causes. 

We have Tradition ; or what is said to have 



78 NATIONAL RELIGIONS. 

happened in the various epochs of the history of 
mankind. 

We have Analogy ; on this we base hypotheses 
of what reasonably may be truths, though we can- 
not prove them by sense-test. 

All of these afford nothing that is not debata- 
ble — nothing tangible, positive, or conclusive, on 
which to base an authoritative declaration as to 
the fact or manner of a future form of existence, 
any more than they afford glimpses of the possibil- 
ity of our having existed in any previous form. In 
other words, no one can say — u I know by my 
own experience and observation, and by facts 
which appeal directly to my senses and compre- 
hension, that this is a fact, and that an error," in 
reference to either proposition. 

"We can, therefore, neither positively affirm nor 
deny the truth of any spiritual or religious the- 
ory in reference to the future destiny of the soul, 
and hope to sustain either position by an appeal to 
reason alone. We can believe, but we cannot pos- 
sibly know, this to be a truth, or that an error. 

§ 2. One form of belief appeals more than 
another to peculiar national or intellectual idiosyn- 



NATIONAL RELIGIONS. 79 

crasies. To change a national belief arising from 
these influences, you must either denationalize, or 
alter the physical temperament of a people, by 
the admixture of races, or hold them in subjection 
to the operation of influences which either elevate 
or lower them physically and intellectually. If a 
barbarian is Christianized, he must not be removed 
from direct communication with Christians, or he 
will lapse again into barbarism. 

There are laws of antagonism which have a 
deeper root both in the moral and physical natures 
of the various races of mankind, than will be read- 
ily admitted by those who hope for a universal 
brotherhood of religious faith and practice. This 
fact is exemplified in the disappearance of some 
races, and the predominance of others; in the 
phenomena of aggression on the one hand, and 
retrogression on the other. This has been appar- 
ent in all ages of the history of the world, as the 
almost uniform result of one people attempting 
to enforce their habits, beliefs, and forms of civi- 
lization upon another people, of totally different 
physical and intellectual characteristics. The ac- 
ceptance of radical changes in morals and man- 
ners, attempted to be enforced by a superior on 



80 NATURAL RELIGIONS. 

an inferior race, has been seldom accomplished. 
As a rule it has been followed by the total extinc- 
tion of the weaker people — clinging to the last 
to their own peculiar forms of religious faith and 
social habits — or, if they survive, a quiet, passive 
and obstinate adherence to their own ideas sur- 
vives with them. 

Even among separate races, differences of tem- 
perament influence and modify moral and religious 
tendencies. The imaginative and docile of all 
European nations incline to gorgeous Catholicity ; 
the practical American, to plain Methodism ; the 
dogmatic Anglo-Saxon, to Presby terianism ; the 
metaphysical German, to the doctrines of Swedeiv 
borg; the sensual Turk, to Mohammedanism; 
and the uncivilized hordes of the earth, to various 
forms of belief and practice, which may be inclu- 
ded in the general term of Theism, or Natural 
Religion. 

§ 3. The Polytheism of the ancient Greeks and 
Romans was, in essence, the worship of the sep- 
arate attributes of the Deity. The gods of My- 
thology, like the idols of savage nations, were but 



THEISM A NATURAL RELIGION. 81 

the representations of the "unknown God," to 
whom the ancient Grecians dedicated a temple, 
and who were taught by St. Paul to recognize, in 
their deity, the " only true and living God " of 
the Christian dispensation. 

Plato, himself a " pagan," preserves a prayer, 
which was handed down from remote antiquity to 
his time, which points to a clear recognition of 
the Deity : 

"■O Thou, who art King of Heaven, grant us 
what is useful to us, whether we ask it, or ask it 
not ! Refuse us what w r ould be hurtful, even if 
we do ask it." 

This prayer may be appropriately offered to- 
day, in St. Peter's, in Pome, St. Paul's, in London, 
or in Plymouth Church, in this city of Brooklyn. 

The infernal powers personified in Mythology 
were plural representations of the Satan or Devil 
of Christianity. All these we regard as the aber- 
rations of unguided intuition, without the enlight- 
enment of Revelation, or of the numberless truths 
which have been discovered in the progress of 
learning and science. 

§ 4. Paganism, Brahminism, Mohammedanism, 



82 THEISM A NATURAL RELIGION. 

and Theism are, according to this view, of syn- 
onymous signification. The idol is but the type 
of a superior invisible Being, which is recognized 
by the very lowest order of the human species. 
The savage who bows in worship before a wooden 
image is really in communion of belief with the 
civilized Deist, and even with some sects who 
reverence the Bible, but deny the divinity of 
Jesus the Saviour — in common with the Jew, who 
still looks for the Messiah. These latter have 
more enlightened forms of worship, but their be- 
lief, and the belief of all who are outside of the 
pale of Christianity, is the same, in all essentials, 
as that which springs from the untutored instincts 
of the savage, viz. : A helief in God, and in a 
future existence. 

The "Heathen" is allied in fundamental, 
though not in minor articles of faith, or in forms 
or ceremonies of worship, with the very Mission- 
ary Societies who are so solicitous to reclaim him. 
They leave unbelieving Atheists, who say " there 
is no God," to scoff in their midst, and go to in- 
vade the simple worship of the distant savage to 
whom atheism is unknown. 

The religion of the savage is based on instinct 



DEATH AFFORDS NO LESSON. 83 

and the miraculous wonders of creation, which 
appeal directly to his senses. The voice of God 
he hears in the reverberating thunder, and in the 
roar of the hurricane ; His anger he sees in the 
forked lightning; His power he feels in the 
throes of earthquakes, in the revolution of seasons, 
in the fact of his own existence, and in every natu- 
ral process, which is as much beyond the compre- 
hension of the most learned theologian, as it is 
above the understanding of the poor savage. 



CHAPTEE X. 



Argument. — 1. Death affords no lesson which throws light 
on the soul's destiny. 2. The phenomena of apparent 
extinction of spirit during life of the body. 3. This 
temporary suspension of spirit-life suggests an enigma. 
4. Reason failing, we look to Revelation — Another quan- 
dary — Which is the true doctrine ? 5. Corollaries of the 
foregoing. 

§ 1. Miracles, or supernatural phenomena, 
appeal to faith, and induce a blind belief in that 
which is incomprehensible. We, therefore, find 
recorded, in writings held to be sacred, specific 



84 DEATH AFFORDS NO LESSON. 

miracles and revelations, on which are based speci- 
fic religious dogmas. But we, who see no specific 
miracles, cannot be blamed if we are slow to be 
impressed by what others are said to see or to 
have seen. 

Thought begets doubt. Writings, said to be 
inspired, miracles, said to have been wrought, 
prophecies, said to have been fulfilled, voices, said 
to be revelations from on High — are all essentials 
for the maintenance of systems of belief which 
are antagonistic to reason. 

The evidence of the senses, and the ordinary 
operation of natural laws, with which we are 
familiar, must be set aside to enable us to admit 
these teachings. 

All these accessories, unless they come within 
personal experience, must be discarded by the 
logical mind, which seeks simply and honestly 
the rational solution of these propositions : Is 
death a process of translation to another state of 
conscious existence ? Is there in death itself any 
tangible evidence of its being a translation of the 
individual to another sphere of existence ? 

Independent of the undefinable instinctive im- 



DEATH AFFORDS NO LESSON. 85 

pression of which we have spoken, we have no 
grounds for asserting that conscious existence con- 
tinues after, or immediately survives, the destruc- 
tion of the human organism. There is nothing 
which we can see in the act of dying, when we. 
watch by the bedside of departing friends, which 
gives us any light. 

There is no fact which can be gathered from 
natural science, or which is deducible from the 
operations of any known law, which points to a 
positive affirmative. We are thrown back on 
Revelation. If we accept its teachings as truths, 
we may helieve but we cannot know them to be 
such. 

§ 2. Per Contra :— On the other hand all the 
essential functions of animal life may continue for 
an indefinite period, while conscious existence has 
ceased. 

We have seen that death-trance is a state 
of absolute temporary death of animal life, 
while the spirit must live, or it could not re- 
animate or reoccupy the body which was tem- 
porarily dead. 

We have now to consider the reverse of this 



86 TEMPORARY DEATH OF THE SPIRIT. 

proposition — that the body may plainly and un- 
doubtedly have life, while the spirit has appar- 
ently ceased to exist. 

Syncope, coma, catalepsy, partial-trance and 
various injuries and diseases may obliterate for a 
time all consciousness. The individual seized, as 
far as all manifestations or exercise of any power 
of mind, soul or spirit are concerned, is, for the 
time, absolutely dead. Will, memory and under- 
standing are totally extinct. The operation of 
every sense may be suspended, and be incapable 
of responding to the most violent impressions. 
Limbs may be lopped off without pain. The 
instinctive desire to supply the waste of the body 
may have ceased, and, in fact, all evidence of the 
continued existence of the spirit is lost to the liv- 
ing body to which it belongs, as well as to the 
observation of others. 

The period of the temporary death of the spirit 
may last but for a minute, or it may embrace days, 
weeks, or even months. In the meantime the 
functions necessary to the maintenance of life in 
the body still go on, preserving its integrity, and 
awaiting the awakening of its spiritual part — or 
its re-occupation — whichever it may be. 



TEMPORARY DEATH OF THE SPIRIT. • 87 

As an illustration of the class of cases to which 
we allude, we will relate one of the many thou- 
sands of similar cases which are preserved in sur- 
gical records : 

During the Crimean w r ar, the captain of a 
French vessel, while in the act of giving a com- 
mand during a naval engagement, was struck on 
the head by a splinter. He fell while the com- 
mand he was giving was hut half uttered. He 
was for a time supposed to be dead. After the en- 
gagement was over it was found that there was 
still life in the body. He lived eighteen months, 
in a kind of vegetative condition. His wants had 
to be observed and attended to by others, for he 
seemed to be totally unconscious of everything — 
even of his own animal necessities. At the end of 
that period of time an operation was performed on 
his head, which proved successful. Other surgical 
operations had proved abortive. When the bone 
was raised from w r here it had been pressing on the 
brain, he jmished the command which he w r as in 
the act of uttering eighteen months before. He 
was quite bewildered to find that he was not in the 
act of fighting the enemy. The eighteen months 
of time was a total blank to him. 



88 REASON FAILS. 

Natural sleep cannot be embraced in the cate- 
gory of these phenomena. In ordinary sleep the 
senses are ready to respond, and the mind is on the 
alert. It is only a period of repose from the exer- 
cise of powers which are still present. 

§ 3. If the spirit continues to live and realize 
existence, immediately on the total death and de- 
struction of the body, it has no analogy in the 
phenomena which accompany some of these cases 
of suspended spiritual animation. Reason fails 
here. 

During the life of the body the spirit may, to 
all appearances, become extinct, or have lost the 
consciousness of its own being for a time. It gives 
no token of existence whatever. Its return to the 
body — which is said to be reanimated — is signal- 
ized by a reawakening to the fact of existence, and 
to prescience of surrounding things. But the in- 
terval of its temporary absence or extinction is 
forever a blank. 

If the indestructibility of the spirit asserts 
itself and immediately survives, in a conscious 
state, the total death of its material habitation, it 
seems paradoxical that it should be susceptible of 






REASON FAILS. 89 

temporary suspension or extinction, during the life 
of the body. 

"Why it is, or how it is, that this anomaly should 
present itself, we are forever debarred from know- 
ing by any effort of the mind itself. We must 
await the experience which will inevitably over- 
take us all, or else be gifted by Omnipotence with 
the power of passing beyond the boundaries of 
natural life. 

The wonders of Revelation, the teachings of 
inspiration and of God himself, in the form of His 
Son, on earth, have to be invoked by poor human- 
ity, for that light and knowledge which is denied 
to its natural capacity. 

§ 4. But are these things true ? Has God vouch- 
safed to communicate directly with His creatures, 
and by such special suspension of ordinary natural 
law, impart knowledge which, without such su- 
pervention, man could never hope to attain ? 

Here we are again left in a quandary if guided 
alone by reason. These statements must be taken 
on trust, as well as the various theories which they 
are invoked to establish. If the statements are 
true in whole, or in part, the doctrines which they 



90 HAS THE TRUTH BEEN REVEALED? 

enforce must be true, in whole or in part. If they 
are false, the theories which rest upon them must 
be false. If we appeal to reason for a solution of 
this new difficulty, reason is impotent to solve it 
infallibly. Which is the true prophet ? Which 
the false ? Which is the true doctrine ? Which 
the heresy ? 

If finite beings were inspired to know and 
teach truths inaccessible to ordinary mortals, how 
are we to know it ? If God appeared in the per- 
son of His Son, to point out these truths, and 
appoint teachers to impart them to all generations 
of men, are the evidences convincing beyond all 
doubt? Is there any proof which can be made 
evident to our senses, — that will come within the 
grasp of ordinary conception — that is indisputa- 
ble? 

Grant that the proofs are overwhelming, and 
absolutely indisputable. These are indeed truths 
and revelations from Heaven. Our Saviour has, 
indeed, appeared on earth, and has appointed 
teachers to instruct our ignorance. Mahomet and 
all other prophets who have taught other than 
Christian doctrines are indeed impostors. The 



WHICH IS THE TRUE DOCTRINE ? 91 

Jew, and the Pagan, and the Buddhist, and the 
Parseeist, and the Heathen are indeed without the 
pale of the true religion. But which is the au- 
thorized Christian teacher ? Which is the true 
way ? Which the false ? 

Here we are again left to grope. We cannot 
fathom by unaided reason the gap which divides 
life from death. We trace the soul to this bound- 
ary, and there it leaves us. If we cry for more 
light, in our intense longing to see beyond the 
shadows which close around us, we are proffered 
illuminations from various quarters — but pointing 
different ways. All are said to come direct from 
God. If we are perplexed, and ask which is the 
authorized beacon, and which the ignis fatuus, we 
are thrown back again on poor finite judgment and 
left to choose or reject as best we can. 

That doctrine which most revolts our reason 
may be the true one. That which most commends 
itself to our prejudices, inclinations, and judgment 
may be the false. 

§ 5. Therefore, laugh at no man's religion. Fol- 
low your own convictions humbly. You are but 
an atom groping in the dark, or, perhaps, led 



92 COROLLARIES. 

blindly by other atoms, more self-sufficient and 
self-righteous than yourself. 

Avoid proselytism. You knovj absolutely 
nothing about a future state beyond that which in- 
stinct teaches. Believe what you please, or what- 
ever is most consonant wdth your conscientious con- 
victions. Those who aspire to teach you are guided 
only by the light in which you walk. If they as- 
sert that they positively know of themselves, and 
in themselves, what exists, what is required or 
what are the laws w T hich govern the shadowy 
world in which you are to exist hereafter, they are 
self-deluded. They mistake zealous faith for abso- 
lute knowledge. 

The mysteries and wonders which everywhere 
surround us show our utter dependence, helpless- 
ness, and ignorance, and how entirely we must rely 
on the mercy of our Creator. The nobler attri- 
butes with which He has gifted human nature 
speak of His beneficence. These lead us to believe 
and hope much ; but the finite creature never feels 
his own insignificance so much as when he attempts 
to understand the works, or to interpret the de- 
signs of the Infinite. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Argument. — 1. There can be but one true theory of the soul's 
destiny — This is hard to be distinguished among the many 
false doctrines. 2. We must of necessity rely on fallible 
human judgment in the selection. 3. When selected, 
must be adopted and subscribed to without demur — This 
is Rational Christianity. 4. Atheism impossible except 
as the result of moral or intellectual deficiency. 5. In- 
culcations of Natural Religion reiterated. 

§ 1. Bishop Hob art suggests that the spirit may- 
sleep with the body, until the general resurrection 
and judgment of Holy Writ. The suspension of 
spirit life in the living body, has some analogy 
to this good man's idea of the " thousand years' 
sleep of the soul." 

A thousand years is an inappreciable fraction of 
a second, when compared with eternity. But how 
can this thought be reconciled to the Saviour's 
declaration to the thief on the cross : " This day," or 
as others have rendered it, " In that day " (of His 
kingdom) " shalt thou be with me in paradise " ? 

But it is not our purpose to enter into the arena 
of polemics. We leave such knotty problems to 



94 CONFLICTING FORMS OF BELIEF. 

the consideration of veteran theologians, whose 
purity of lives, learning and diligence, give their 
opinions weight and authority. 

Let them argue and wrangle as they will on the 
momentous questions involved in the redemption, 
resurrection and judgment of man, and on the com- 
parative probabilities of a limbo, purgatory, or 
hell. The finality, whatever it may be, stands 
unaltered by the decree of the Eternal. 

We only know that, of the many forms of be- 
lief, only one can by any possibility be true in all 
its parts. We dare not say that all may be wrong. 

It is all theory ! theory ! Involving inter- 
minable and perplexing points of conflict in faith 
and morals, which never will be definitely eluci- 
dated — unless through some special interposition of 
God's favor, — by all the special pleading, all the 
logic, and all the rhetoric of the combined w T isdom 
of the world. 

§ 2. If we accept precepts other than those in- 
culcated by Natural Religion, we need not reason. 
We must accept the mysteries of Revelation as 
truths. 

But again — what do they teach ? Tou need 



BATI0NAL CHRISTIANITY. 95 

not try to discover for yourself. You cannot read 
two consecutive chapters of the written law, and 
agree with your neighbor as to their exact mean- 
ing. You may not even know which is the true 
version. Your neighbor's judgment may be clearer 
than your own. You may not be able to compare 
the opinions of authorities on doubtful points. 
The child is incapable of understanding the law, 
yet is held responsible. You are again lost in con- 
jecture. Where there are conflicting opinions on 
points of faith, one must be wrong. You cry out : 
" What must I do to be saved ? " 

§ 3. If you believe safety lies in the way of Rev- 
elation, you may escape from this dilemma. Cease 
to reason for yourself on separate dogmas. Close 
your Bible from all controversial examination. 
" Hear the Church." Seek out that form of faith 
and practice which most commends itself to your 
judgment, and w T hich seems to you to have the 
best claim to authority. Subscribe to its forms, 
laws and requirements, and obey them without 
question. This is rational Christianity. 

If you cannot enforce your reason to accept and 
obey any special system of faith and practice, you 



96 ATHEISM MORAL INSANITY. 

can only obey your instincts, and fall back once 
more on the precepts of Natural Religion, which 
you know to be infallible as far as their inculca- 
tions extend. 

In no case can you become an Atheist, and 
deny your God,, unless you are morally insane. 
The imbecile who believes in his own utter anni- 
hilation is to be pitied. To say " there is no God," 
is an expression of moral idiocy. 

§ 4. "We have an assurance of the immortality of 
the soul, in the instinctive knowledge of the fact 
which is as universal to mankind as the belief in a 
Deity. We shrink from the contemplation of an- 
nihilation. Byron thought that the idea of eternal 
damnation was not more hideous. 

§ 5. All living creatures have knowledge which 
is inborn. Man is no exception to the rule. As 
we have insisted elsewhere, man also is gifted 
with instinct, and instinct never errs. Natural Re- 
ligion, which arises from this intuitive perception 
of truth, embraces a belief in God and in a future 
life. In essence, it is universally the same, 
throughout the habitable portions of the globe. 
Barbarous rites and plurality of gods may deform 



INSTINCT IN MAN. 97 

and disguise the worship of primitive savages; 
but the idea of an immortal and invisible Power 
which must be propitiated for future good is ever 
the same. 

The objection may be urged — as it has been by 
essayists against the doctrine of intuitive knowl- 
edge of spiritual truth — that some degraded tribes 
of Bushmen are said to have no idea of God or 
futurity ; that others deify animals, worship snakes 
and crocodiles, and practise human sacrifices. We 
object to the objections on the ground that the first 
statement is of doubtful authenticity ; and that a 
pitiful exception, selected from the dregs of hu- 
manity, is too puerile for consideration. Such ar- 
guments sink into utter insignificance when con- 
trasted with the overwhelming preponderance of 
the grand truth of God's universal recognition by 
the great mass of mankind, from the remotest an- 
tiquity to the present time. The character of the 
idols or of the sacrifices cannot alter the fact of 
their being evidences of belief in a superior power 
and in a future life. 

We purposely leave ourselves open to the re- 
proach of continual iteration, in reaching the same 
conclusions through so many different channels of 



98 DOCTRINE OF INFINITE MERCT. 

thought. The same ideas are repeated, with inten- 
tional reiteration, because we are impressed with 
their importance, and because we wish to enforce 
their acceptance as truths in the face of so many 
adverse authorities. 



CHAPTER XII. 



Argument — 1. The doctrine of Infinite Love submitted — 
Not sustained by mere finite ideas of mercy. 2. Nature 
of all living creatures to suffer, and to inflict pain — The 
strong preys upon the weak. 3. These things more in ac- 
cordance with our ideas of Satanic origin. 4. Blessings 
of existence here compensate for penalties — Impossible 
to fathom the motives of the Creator. 

§ 1. Reason fails everywhere when it attempts 
to define the Undefinable. We feel that our Crea- 
tor is a " God of Love," and of infinite mercy and 
beneficence. But we dare not weigh this belief 
in scales which are framed in accordance with 
mere human ideas of justice and mercy. 

We dare not judge by what we see, think, or 
know. 

Our narrow ideas of what constitutes love and 
mercy may be correct when applied to things 



DOCTRINE OF INFINITE MERCY. 99 

within our own little sphere; but we must not 
apply them to estimate the inscrutable motives 
of the Almighty, 

Let us, for a moment, turn our little ray of 
human light on the order of nature. "What do 
we see ? 

§ 2. All living creatures created with suscepti- 
bilities to pain. All enduring more or less tor- 
ture ; and all must inevitably suffer the throes of 
death. To suffer pain and death are the penalties 
of existence. The instinct of one class of animals 
is to torment and kill some other class that has 
no natural power of resistance. The innocent 
dove is made to be the natural prey of the hawk. 
The harmless lamb is the victim of a natural in- 
stinct implanted in the dog and wolf, which rend 
and tear it, for very wantonness, if not for food. 
Fierce animals are created with natures that can 
only derive sustenance from the torn throats of 
freshly slain victims. 

The reptile only gorges living prey — so that 
the victim's agony is prolonged. The cat tortures 
its natural prey before devouring it. And so on 
through the whole order of Nature. The stronger 



100 DOCTRINE OF INFINITE MERCY. 

preys upon the weaker; and that which is the 
most harmless and innocent has the greatest num- 
ber of natural foes. 

This instinct to oppress and inflict pain, and to 
kill and destroy, is not developed alone in the 
inferior animals ; but man — the u God-like" — is 
cursed with the same necessity and depraved im- 
pulse. 

§ 3. All these things bespeak a demoniacal, 
instead of a beneficent origin, if judged alone by 
human views of mercy. But who will dare say 
so ? We cannot see beneath the surface of the 
things which surround our limited vision. Hu- 
man judgment must not be blasphemously ar- 
raigned against Omnipotence. We can only ac- 
knowledge our utter incapacity to estimate our 
Creator's motives — bow humbly to our destiny — 
" Wait the great teacher — Death, and God adore." 

Man's disobedience of God's commands in the 
Garden of Paradise — according to Revelation — 
opened this pandora's box of evils on the world. 
It brought death and all its concomitant horrors 
and evils upon all living creatures. When we 
recollect that eternal torment, in addition — accord- 



NOT IN ACCORDANCE WITH REASON. 101 

ing to certain sectarian formulas — is to be the 
doom of a majority of the children of men, poor 
human reason falls short of comprehending that 
the penalties are proportioned to the offence. 

§ 4. But these sombre views are, in part, dis- 
pelled when we reflect on the manifold blessings 
which compensate for the inseparable ills which 
attend our little day on earth, and on our utter 
impotence to fathom the ends of our Creator. 

The joys which accompany existence in our 
beautiful world are innumerable. Exuberant 
health, and a conscience free from offence, make 
this world still a paradise to man. The sum of 
delight manifested by the teeming life which fills 
the forest, the air, and the water of the earth — 
even according to our fallible powers of compu- 
tation — equals, if it does not exceed, the total of 
pains and penalties. Why this creature suffers 
so much, and that so little, we know not, nor 
need we ask to know. 

The power, the grandeur and the majesty of 
the Deity are manifested in His works. It be- 
comes us to read these evidences of His living 
presence with trembling awe and adoration, in- 



102 FINITE JUDGMENT WORTHLESS. 

stead of querulously questioning His decrees. 
The Power which wrought the universe — which 
guides the paths of myriads of majestic worlds 
through space — which arched the heavens with a 
panoply of ponderous globes, and filled an aching 
void with glorious life — cannot be interpreted or 
comprehended by any mere sentient atom of His 
own creation. 

Journeying onward to that far off bourne — 
Yon shadowy world that bordereth on this, 
How many fitful streams of human life 
Are hourly springing silently to light, 
How many vanishing — yet leave no trace — 
Some swelling with the uncurbed tide of youth, 
Too many tossed by passion's angry storms ; 
While, gently and unruffled, others course 
Where mild Religion sways, and Reason curbs 
The tides of thought and feeling. Each pursues 
Its devious course awhile, then flows within 
The night that shrouds eternity. 

We are pilgrims travelling hence, 
And though on paths so varied and diverse, 
Let none repine, or raise rebellious thought. 

— What though where plenty 
Strews the way with downy pleasures ; where the 
Air is filled with fragrance and with music, 
Where the eye doth ever dwell on beauty, 
Here one doth journey, and the pilgrim's cheek 
Doth rob from luscious fruits the rosy hue 
Of health, and his eye gives back the sparkle 
Of the fountain — thus journeying onward till 



PRIVATE JUDGMENT INADMISSIBLE. 103 

His exit to the land of shades is marked 

By all the pompous signs of woe. What then ? 

— We know not yet the end. 

Burdened with care 
Others pass in weary pilgrimage o'er 
The thorny road of penury — where still 
Cadaverous want doth ever mock at Hope. 
The sequel ? — Who doth know it ? 



CHAPTER XIII. 



Argument. — 1. If Revelation be accepted, the right of self- 
judgment must be surrendered. 2. It is hard to enforce 
reason to obedience. 3. Self-elected teachers considered. 
4. Principles of right inculcated by nature. 

§ 1. It is natural that to reason on these subjects 
should be interdicted by orthodox codes of moral- 
ity founded on Revelation. In this particular the 
Catholic Church is consistent. 

Authority which claims to be delegated from 
God to administer His revealed laws, may consist- 
ently fulminate anathemas against all who ques- 
tion or refuse to obey its mandates. To set up 
one's own reason in opposition to its commands, or 
to draw inferences from the Bible in opposition to 



104 PRIVATE JUDGMENT INADMISSIBLE. 

its teachings, is irreconcilable to its assumption 
of divine authority, and is, therefore, rebellion or 
heresy. 

It is natural that this should be regarded as 
presumption. It is natural that the Church should 
deny the right of private judgment, and to de- 
nounce those who seek, in its separate doctrines, 
for evidences of their divine origin, satisfactory to 
themselves, or which accord with their own under- 
standing and interpretation of the Bible. The 
Church, considering itself the properly commis- 
sioned authority to administer and expound the 
law, commands. It is ours to obey — not to ques- 
tion. 

A religion which allows the rights of private 
judgment, stultifies itself. If it claims to be 
itself, the lawful exponent of God's laws, how can 
it suffer its followers to select, reject, or modify the 
law in accordance with every whim and caprice of 
private opinion ? 

A civil government which would hand over its 
statutes to the people and tell them to read the 
laws, and to interpret and obey each one to suit 
themselves, would soon find itself presiding over 
a pandemonium. 



REASON WILL NOT BE CONTROLLED. 105 

§ 2. Still, rebellious reason will assert its inde- 
pendence. It will obey its uncontrollable impulse 
to receive the convictions of reflection and experi- 
ence and to record them, whether right or wrong. 

Galileo stepped from his proper sphere of phi- 
losophy to usurp the prerogative of the Church. 
He presumed to expound ecclesiastical law, so that 
it should conform to his astronomical discoveries. 
He was obliged to recant.* " Still," said he, " the 

* Having no prejudice to subserve we have adopted the 
true version of the philosopher's difficulty with the Hierar- 
chy of Rome. He was decidedly in fault himself. Not wrong 
in his philosophic theory — but in his flagrant disregard of 
the proprieties of his position as a stipendiary on the bounty 
of the Papal Court, and in his violation of a pledge in ref- 
erence to the publication of his views, which, he said, he 
had " forgotten." 

We despise bigotry ; and take this occasion to rebuke an 
aspersion against the Catholic Church, which is as unjust as 
it is universal. It has enough to do to defend itself against 
objections which may be truthfully alleged, without being 
required to repel unjust accusations. It is not probable that 
Galileo was unjustly treated by Pope Urban, who had been 
the friend and benefactor of the philosopher, for many 
years before his (Urban's) elevation to the Pontificate. Sir 
David Brewster says : 

" The dogmas of the Catholic Church had been brought by 
Galileo into direct collision with the deductions of science. 
The leader of the philosophic band had broken the moat 
solemn armistice with the Inquisition. He had renounced 
the ties of gratitude which bound him to the PontifF." 



106 IMPRISONMENT OF GALILEO. 

world moves." Whether reconcilable to ecclesias- 
tical law or not the world still " moves." It was 
rolling in its prescribed path through space in 
Joshua's time, in obedience to the same immutable 
laws which guide it now. But if the prophet's 
wish to prolong the day was not expressed in ac- 
cordance with modern theories of the movements 
of the planets — what then ? This surely need not 
impugn his claim to be considered as inspired of 
God. His wish being understood, was — according 
to inspired writing — granted by the God whom he 
served. 

§ 3. While systems of religion are taught, they 
must be represented by their authorized teachers. 
The minister is but the appointed mouth-piece of 
his church. If deemed worthy, properly commis- 



Nicholas Copernicus, a priest of the Catholic church, and 
the Apostle of Astronomy, taught the true theory of the Solar 
System in Rome for years, without molestation. And Kep- 
ler, the Lutheran astronomer, and a co-laborer with Galileo, 
was given a professorship in a Catholic University at Gratz, 
after he was condemned by the Lutheran theologians of 
Tubingen because he taught " that the earth revolves about 
the sun and not the sun about the earth, as the Bible 
teaches." 






SELF-ELECTED ZEALOTS. 107 

sioned or ordained, he does not come within the 
category of self -elected zealots. 

The vanity of man is painfully illustrated by 
these self-constituted ambassadors of God, and self- 
appointed interpreters of His will and laws. They 
have special u calls." They are of the " elect." 
They have special "missions" from on high. 

To one who realizes the insignificance of mor- 
tality, and the grandeur of the Deity, it seems to 
be sublime audacity — nay, blasphemous self-right- 
eousness, — for such a one to assume to be so favor- 
ed, preferred by, or familiar with his Creator. If 
so preferred and gifted, we would naturally expect 
them to prove the validity of their missions by 
the exercise of special powers. That man who 
can justly claim to be God's vicegerent here on 
earth, and to have divine authority for directing 
the eternal affairs of his fellow-creatures, must be, 
indeed, fortunate above all others, and one to be 
looked upon with reverence. 

§ 4. God's laws are written and indelibly stamped 
in His works, so that all may read, whether they 
have or have not been written on special tablets. 
The commands which were graven on the summit 



108 REVELATION AND NATURE ACCORD. 

of Mount Sinai are also graven in general charac- 
ters throughout the universe, so that they are in 
part recognized by nations and peoples from whom 
the Decalogue has been withheld. 

We know the blessings which follow obedience, 
and the penalties which attend their infringement 
by experience. The perfect man would still be he 
who would refrain from sin against himself, and 
from violating his instinctive principles of right, 
if all social special codes and systems of religion 
were abolished. 

Nature guided the ancient Grecians in the en- 
actment of laws which developed the most perfect 
physical and intellectual man. They inculcated 
temperance, chastity, industry, frugality, and every 
virtue which is essential to maintain the body in 
health and the mind in tranquillity. The inculca- 
tions of pure Christianity are directed to the same 
ends. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

Argument. — 1. Spiritualistic fantasies, founded on excep- 
tional natural occurrences — These are fruitful sources 
of delusion and imposition. 2. Those which are now 
mysteries await solution, by some laws of nature yet to 
be discovered. 3. Some truth in these theories barely pos- 
sible. 

§ 1. This impotent striving to fathom the 
unfathomable will ever belong to erring human 
nature. Spiritual theories which are founded on 
various phenomena, seemingly inexplicable by any 
known natural law, will still follow one another in 
confounding succession. 

Supernatual qualities will still be attributed to 
novel and exceptional exhibitions of intuition and 
intellectual power, which are really dependent on 
super-excitation, or unusual development of the 
brain and nervous centres. These will still be 
looked upon by the devotee of Mysticism as 
" Footfalls on the boundaries of another world." 

Diseased and deluded optics will still peruse — 
and the wondering possessor will describe in de- 



110 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

tail — apparitions, whose presence is denied to 
healthy vision and to those of less exalted nervous 
irritability. The wonders of trance-death ; clair- 
voyance ; prescience of coming events ; intuitive 
knowledge of others' feelings and thoughts ; me- 
diums possessing transcendental sensibilities and 
affinities; seer-sight; the ghoul-like wonders of 
vampirism; the visions of over-wrought fanati- 
cism ; the yearning imaginations of bereaved rel- 
atives, whose intense grief resolves itself into 
seeming communication with the shades of the 
departed — all these wonders will still be seized 
upon as evidences of intercommunication with the 
spirit- world, and as foundations for the practice of 
imposition on the credulous. 

§ 2. To us of grosser fibre, and less refined and 
exalted sensibilities, these metaphysical mysteries 
only seem to be abnormal manifestations, some of 
which are susceptible of explanation, while others 
depend on some law, or laws, regulating the con- 
nection of mind and matter, which are as yet un- 
known, but which only await discovery by some 
future explorer in the unknown regions of natural 
science. 

§ 3. Yet even here skepticism should be cau- 



BUKIAL RITES. Ill 

tious. There may be actual communion with the 
spirit- world, in some of these multifarious phenom- 
ena. Like the doubting Thomas, let us be ever 
ready to yield to indubitable demonstration which 
comes fairly within the grasp of healthy sense. 
But beware that it comes in the form of innocence 
— free from the taint of evil or suspicion of Sa- 
tanic communication. 



CHAPTER XY. 



Argument. — 1. The only legitimate social distinctions are 
based on spiritual and physical excellence. 2. Burial 
rites of the Aborigines and Hindoos exhibit a perfect 
faith in future life. 

§1. Death levels all distinctions. Prince and 
peasant, sage and savage, are all discovered to be 
made of the same materials. They unite once 
more in their original elements, which are dis- 
persed promiscuously. Chemical analysis finds 
them to be identical in all their parts. 

During life, health of body, refinement of mind, 
purity of morals, and intellectual superiority, make 
visible physical distinctions — the only species of 



112 BURIAL RITES. 

aristocracy which is legitimate, because it is natu- 
ral ; but in death these distinctions disappear, and 
all are in common. 

What matters it to the lifeless clay whether 
handed over to the desecration of the dissecting- 
table, or to pompous obsequies ? Whether hidden 
in a ditch sepulchre, or beneath a storied urn ? 
Whether consigned to a Potter's Field, or covered 
with consecrated sod ? Nothing to the inanimate 
remains ; but much to the feelings of surviving 
friends. 

The lovable custom of mourning over and 
cherishing the remains of the dead, is universal to 
mankind. It is only to the cold eye of Philoso- 
phy that it is but inert matter which, like 

" Imperial Caesar, dead, and turned to clay, 
May serve to stop a hole, to keep the wind away." 

The pyramids and the catacombs of the an- 
cients are stupendous monuments of this endur- 
ing trait of humanity. The solicitude which 
sought to preserve with pious care the semblance of 
the human form, is exemplified in the preserved 
bodies which may still be gathered from these re- 
positories, where they have reposed for scores of 
centuries. 






BURIAL RITES. 113 

§ 2. Burial rites, as practised by various nations 
give indication of the universal belief of mankind 
in future life. The same belief in the " Great 
Spirit," and in the " happy hunting grounds " of 
some other world, prevailed among the Aborigines 
when Columbus first presented the cross to their 
astonished gaze, that now is the faith of the few 
poor remnants of the race, which survive the chris- 
tianizing process of the aggressive race of white 
brothers, who push them slowly toward the setting 
sun. 

The Indian requires his favorite horse to be 
slain on his grave, and food and weapons to be left 
with his corse, so that he may be properly equipped 
for the journey to the heaven of his belief — the 
happy hunting-grounds of his Manitou. 

The Hindoo wife expires on the funeral pyre 
which consumes the body of her husband. She 
submits to the " suttee," so that she may journey 
with him to the land of shades. 

A partial suttee is practised among a tribe of 
northern Indians, mentioned in the reports of the 
earlier exploring expeditions to the northwestern 
portions of North America, as the Athabascans. 
If the body of the husband is consumed without 



114 BELIEF IN FUTUBE LIFE. 

serious injury to the wife, she collects the ashes 
and deposits them in a little basket which she al- 
ways carries about with her. 

Whenever a Mongolian prince dies he is buried 
on the Altai. His best horse and favorite servant 
are killed and buried with him, with the formula: 
" Depart for the next world, and attend upon your 
deceased master." 

We have never met with any history of a tribe 
even of the lowest orders of the human species, 
with whom the narrators could hold intercourse, 
that had not some kind of creed — some recogni- 
tion of a spiritual power, and some vague idea of a 
future life. It was at one time thought that the 
" Original People " of the Malay peninsula were 
without a religion. But it is now known that they 
also have a Deity which they term " Angayai." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Argument. — 1. Theories of the nature of the soul. 2. Athe- 
istical doctrines derived, in part, from vague definitions 
of the truths of Natural Science. 3. Matter infinitely 
divisible. 4. The dividing line between that which is 
material, and that which is immaterial, not generally un- 
derstood, or easily defined. 5. Special materialistic the- 
ory illustrated. 6. Recurrence to the phenomena of 
temporary death of the body — More examples. 

§1. Haying briefly considered the phenomena 
which attend the connection of the spirit with the 
body, in the beginning of life, the marvels which 
attend its temporary separation, and the paucity 
of knowledge which is afforded, in regard to its 
nature or destiny, by the process of its permanent 
separation from the body, — which is death, — we 
come now to the consideration of the various the- 
ories as to its special constitution. Some of the 
materialistic views seem preposterous enough, and 
the whole controversy ends as it begins — in specu- 
lation. 

Whether the soul or spirit of man is an aura, 



116 



THEORIES OF THE SPIRIT. 



an essence, or a material, originating in, and hav- 
ing the characteristics of some elementary prin- 
ciple of matter, or an immaterial abstraction, 
breathed into man from the Godhead, are questions 
on which have been spent much abstruse and, 
practically, needless argument. 

It is the province of Natural Science to pry 
into Nature's laboratory, and to learn its secrets. 
But elements that are so subtle as to elude the 
senses, and that can only be known to exist at all, 
from their effects, are still Nature's secrets, and are 
likely to remain so. It is impious folly to base 
any doctrine as to the nature or destiny of the soul, 
or any religious tenet, on their imaginary quali- 
ties, or on any comparative test of their known 
qualities. 

§ 2. Astute philosophers are ever in the pursuit 
of elements. To achieve an analysis which proves 
some agent which is held to be an ultimate ele- 
mentary principle to be really a compound, is a 
triumph of which they are deservedly proud. But 
still analytical art is yet in its infancy. The hy- 
pothetical separation of matter into elements, or 
constituent principles, and these latter from 



THEORIES OF THE SPIRIT. 117 

" forces" and immaterial principles, are still only 
hypotheses. 

The facts already elucidated, however, have af- 
forded an opening for the introduction of Athe- 
istical and materialistic theories of spirit, which 
win attention by their seeming plausibility. 

Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, gravitation, 
affinity, attraction, powers which operate in main- 
taining the circuit of the planets, and various im- 
ponderable agents which elude the senses, and 
which are only known to exist by their occasional 
effects, have been variously classed as material, sub- 
stantive agents, having the characteristics of 
matter, or as immaterial principles which are 
called " forces." 

Gravitation, which impels inert matter to some 
common centre, is called a force. Attraction, which 
is manifested on the approach of like atoms of 
matter, is called a force. Electricity, which is set 
in motion by certain actions and conjunctions of 
material things, is sometimes called a force. Ma- 
chines are made in a certain fashion, and they then 
become the receptacles of, or set in motion, an elec- 
tric current which may be a material fluid or a 



118 THEORIES OF THE SPIRIT. 

" force/' but which is no part of the machine at 
all. Destroy the machine, and the "force" still 
remains. 

Centripetal and centrifugal " forces," are sup- 
posed to maintain the circuit of the planets in their 
orbits. The presence and conjunction of these 
globes in space, it is supposed, call into action 
these " forces " which pervade the universe. 

The question incidentally arises : If a fiat of the 
Almighty should annihilate the solar system, what 
would become of these " forces " ? If they are 
immaterial they are incapable of being anni- 
hilated. If they are qualties inherent in and 
belonging to matter, then they are a part 
of matter and therefore material. The ex- 
tinction of matter to which they belong, and 
of which they are a component part, would 
extinguish them also. These distinctive appella- 
tions should always be considered as defining sub- 
stantive agents. A classification which leads away 
from this conclusion only befogs the mind. It is 
clear that all existing agents or powers wh:ch we 
know to exist in nature, by direct sense-test or by 
their observed effects, are materials, with, perhaps, 
the single exception of that principle which ani- 



MATERIALISTIC VAGARIES, 119 

mates living beings — man's soul being still an ex- 
ception above this latter, as an emanation from the 
Godhead. From these refinements and indistinc- 
tions have sprung the doctrines of some that mat- 
ter itself is indestructible — that it can only be re- 
solved back again into elementary principles, which 
verge into immateriality. In any event, if the 
universe is resolved back again into the chaos from 
which it was called by the Creator, this should 
be destruction enough to suit even materialistic 
views. 

It is in this sophistical way, however, that the 
hypothesis has been approached, that man is formed 
in such a manner as to be a natural machine for 
the reception and manifestation of a " force " or 
spiritual power, which is not exclusively a part of 
himself, but which he is only capable of a setting 
in motion" while in a normal condition of vege- 
tative existence. The " machine" wears out, but 
the " force" still lives to occupy and to be man- 
ifested through successive generations of the 
same vegetable animal — if the expression can be 
used. But if the human race should become ex- 
tinct, this a force," which is the universal soul of 



120 MATEKIALISTIC VAGARIES. 

man, might still exist in common with other ele- 
mentary principles. According to this wild the- 
ory an electric shock, and a thought emitted from 
the brain, might be embraced in the same category, 
for they are both only " set in motion" by appro- 
priate machines. The reader may smile at the 
absurdity of these views. But crude as these no- 
tions may seem they prevail among a large class 
of infidels who profess to gather their doctrines 
from the teachings of natural science. 

This is one materialistic view of the nature of 
the soul as we understand it. The assumptions 
and comparisons are based on imaginary distinc- 
tions between matter, force, and other elementary 
principles of nature which have no definite foun- 
dation. It is an impious arraignment of natural 
instinct which teaches and inculcates, in un- 
mistakable characters, the separate and individual 
existence of the immortal soul, without estimating 
its violation of the precepts of Christianity and of 
the universal religion of mankind. We say " uni- 
versal," because atheism and infidelity are excep- 
tional, and prevail only in u enlightened " coun- 
tries. 



MATTER INFINITELY DIVISIBLE. 121 

§ 3. Electricity, as we have seen, is made to 
declare its presence by the action of matter on 
matter. It is eliminated somewhere in Nature's 
laboratory, and pervades the earth. It may itself 
be a compound. 

Galvanism and magnetism have peculiar prop- 
erties in themselves. These in turn may be divis- 
ible. The science of chemistry will be forever 
progressive — still discovering compounds in things 
previously supposed to be simples. These may be 
divided and sub-divided, refined and re-refined, un- 
til the comprehension is lost in the process of infi- 
nite divisibility, while yet the ultimate elements 
refuse to come within the grasp of science. 

Newton declared that all his brilliant discov- 
eries in science might be considered as the picking 
up, here and there, of a stray shell on the strand, 
while the ocean of illimitable truths still lay un- 
discovered before him. 

The student of nature always finds himself — 

" Still mounting some tall mountain, yet doth find 
More heights before him than he left behind." 

Living organized creatures are traced by the 
microscope to their habitations in some particles 
of matter. These, in turn, may contain other in- 



122 RATIONALISTIC ABSURDITIES. 

finitesimal parasites. It requires an effort of the 
mind to comprehend the possibility of such atomic 
creatures having muscles, nerves, vessels and other 
appliances of distinct animal life. Our senses are 
too coarse to detect or reach all these finalities. 

§ 4. When we reflect on these truths the ab- 
surdity of dogmatic decrees which define this to 
be material and therefore perishable, and that to 
be immaterial, and therefore imperishable, are too 
striking to escape attention. Such refinements 
only befog the understanding, which they are in- 
tended to enlighten. 

§5. The materialist argues that the mind, 
soul, spirit, aura, essence, or whatever he may 
please to term that which constitutes the spiritual 
part of man, is but the elimination of certain 
combinations of matter. That it is directly de- 
pendent on the healthy action of the brain, its ap- 
pendages, and their associate organs, and is but 
the elimination of that combined action. That 
the ten thousand nerves which radiate from the 
brain and stretch out to receive impressions, are 
but the strings of an instrument. They respond 



RATIONALISTIC ABSURDITIES. 123 

to the action of matter with which they come in 
contact ; each one gives out a separate response 
or sound, and — to use a ready comparison — the 
resulting combination of effects, or sounds, is the 
music, or the mind. 

Some of these instruments are exquisitely 
tuned in nature's workshop. They respond to 
the slightest touch, and give out harmonious 
music. Others of coarser make give out discord- 
ant sounds, and cannot attain the higher notes. 
These living instruments are liable to get out of 
order; but they have a self-adjusting power by 
which the scale may be regulated, unless the main 
cords snap, or the globe-like body of the instru- 
ment suffers irreparable injury. Then the " mu- 
sic " ceases. The instrument responds no longer. 
It goes to decay, and the mind-music which it dis- 
coursed, like JEolian sounds which arise from the 
mere play of the elements, is silent for evermore. 

§ 6. There is no physiological fact involved in 
the foregoing illustration which can be disputed. 
The intellectual part of man is, undoubtedly, con- 
nected with and manifested through the brain and 
sensorial organs. But the materialistic deductions, 



124 RATIONALISTIC ABSURDITIES. 

nevertheless, do not necessarily follow. "We do 
not know that soul, mind, spirit, and intellect are 
all to be considered as one ; or, if so considered, 
that it must be necessarily material, because being 
inseparably connected with materials, during life. 
We must, however, reconsider this last admission, 
or qualify it ; for we have seen that it is possible 
for the soul to separate from, and again reanimate 
its corporeal habitation when there is certainly no 
disease of, or injury to the brain or nerves, which 
are supposed to be the special organs of intelli- 
gence. We will instance Col. Townshend's case 
as the best authenticated. 

During his temporary self-induced death, his 
spirit must have continued to exist, notwithstand- 
ing his total unconsciousness of the fact. Voli- 
tion must have existed or he could not have willed 
his own reanimation. It is significant also, that 
during his last trance he was impressed with a 
premonition of his immediate death. The moment 
of his restoration to consciousness was signalized 
by his announcement that his end was at hand, 
and by his hurried preparations for the event. 

This view may seem inconsistent with the enig- 
matical proposition which we have presented else- 



OTHER EXAMPLES. 125 

where, of the apparent temporary death of the 
spirit while evident life exists in the body. But it 
will be recollected that this case is included among 
the proofs of the truth of the converse of this 
proposition — that the spirit may live while the 
body is apparently dead. 

While touching on this divergent topic we will 
embrace the occasion to mention other cases sim- 
ilar to Col. Townshend's. Monti, in a letter to 
llaller, among other instances mentions a peasant 
who could spontaneously assume the condition of 
death-trance, " upon whom, when he assumed this 
state, the flies would settle. Breathing, the pulse, 
and all ordinary signs of life disappeared." 

A case is related which is credited to the 
Journal des Savans, 1741, of a Col. Russell, who 
refused to suffer his wife to be buried in the belief 
that she was not dead. His friends considered 
him to be insane with grief. But he armed him- 
self and would suffer no one to approach the body. 
He was rewarded at the end of the eighth day by 
her sudden restoration to life. 

Dr. Schmidt, physician to the hospital of Pan- 
derborn in 1835, relates the case of a man named 
Caspar Kreite, who remained eighteen days in a 



126 OTHER EXAMPLES. 

condition of doubtful death. During the time he 
was observed to frown and to move one hand 
slightly. On the nineteenth day evidences of total 
death supervened. It was thought that efforts 
to reanimate him should have been attempted. 

A priest of the name of Coelius Rhodaginus is 
also mentioned as having the faculty of control- 
ling the heart's action, and passing for a time into 
a state of seeming death. 

A woman of Douai, the wife of a Francis Du- 
mont, after having been carefully examined and 
declared to be dead by the surgeon Rigaudeaux, 
was nailed in a coffin. Some doubt having recur- 
red to the surgeon's mind, he ordered the lid of 
the coffin to be removed. Finding the lips red 
and the joints flexible he directed frictions of the 
body and stimulants to the nostrils to be persever- 
ingly applied. The woman recovered. 



CHAPTEE XVII. 

Argument. — 1. Theories of the nature of the soul. Phrenol- 
ogy questionable in part. 2. Animal Magnetism the 
origin of spiritual heresies. 3. Another materialistic 
illustration — Not too absurd to obtain credence. 4. A 
German University student's vagary — He commits sui- 
cide. 5. Whether the spirit is Material or Immaterial — 
is really immaterial. 

§ 1. The scieuce of Phrenology pretends to 
point out in the brain the exact circumscribed 
spots in which the various emotions and faculties 
of the mind are located and have their origin. 
We do not question the truth of the general prin- 
ciples of Phrenology. The temperament, condi- 
tion of health, and brain development, do unques- 
tionably afford indices of the peculiarities and in- 
tellectual capacity of the individual. 

But we do question the accuracy or reliability 
of its arbitrary line divisions of the brain, and 
also the deductions which are liable to be drawn 
from its teachings by those of atheistical tenden- 
cies. It should, however, be admitted en passant 



128 ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 

that Gall, Spurzheim, Combe, and other apostles 
and lights of this system of mind, specially dis- 
claim any religious aim in its teachings. Like 
Galileo Galilei, they profess to have demonstrated 
facts, which have discovered themselves as the 
reward of their assiduity in philosophical research, 
without reference to religious dogmas or ecclesi- 
astical decrees ; but they insist that they are facts, 
whether reconcilable to these latter, or not. 

§ 2. The singular effects of " mind acting on 
mind " — as it was defined to be by a commission 
of inquiry, of which Benjamin Franklin was a 
member — or the effects produced by certain forms 
of juxtaposition of persons having physical affini- 
ties, were first pointed out by Mesmer. 

He believed, and his disciples have since 
taught, that the phenomena which are elicited by 
the mesmeric process depend on the action of a 
species of magnetism, which is engendered in the 
living body, and which is, therefore, denominated 
Animal-magnetism. 

That the living body evolves a nervous fluid 
or " aura," which is allied, in some of its sensible 
qualities, to what we know of the characteristics 



ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 129 

of magnetism, is highly probable. Like other 
subtle agents, we can only judge of its existence 
and nature by its effects. The nerves in a body 
recently dead respond readily to an electric cur- 
rent. Muscular contractions, and other life-like 
motions, follow its application, to an extent that 
fairly startles the beholder. 

§ 3. On this slight basis, and a few other con 
comitant facts in science, which are not of suffi- 
cient importance to mention, has arisen another 
materialistic theorem of spirit which suggests, in 
illustration, another comparison: That a subtle 
essence, allied in some of its features to the gal- 
vanic fluid, is evolved in the living body, — giving 
out heat, and consuming oxygen, like other agents 
of its class — but having prescience and all other 
powers ascribed to the mind — and, in fact, being 
the mind itself. The brain is the central 
" machine," the nerves being the " wires" which 
conduct u telegrams" to and from the outer world. 

This, in brief, is another doctrine of mind 
which may be considered by learned pedants as 
too absurd for notice. But we do not write for 
the benefit of very learned people, who may know 
more than we know ourselves, who never enter- 



130 SPIRITUAL HERESIES. 

tain such views as we attempt to refute, and who 
are slow to believe that such ideas can prevail. 
These ideas may not take, always, the exact shape 
in which we have put them ; but it is a concise 
illustration of the vague, materialistic doctrines 
which affect the understanding of self-satisfied 
pseudo-philosophers, who may be met in the 
walks of every-day life. 

It is the fault of essays, usually, that they are 
prepared more to suit the taste and capacity of 
amateur literati rather than to inform and instruct 
the understandings of the million, who have no 
leisure, or opportunity of acquiring literary taste, 
or a varied store of knowledge. 

§ 4. Another materialistic view which we 
have met suggests that man may be an " aggrega- 
tion of sentient atoms, which have an affinity for 
each other ; which combine for a time to form the 
organized being, and again dissolve in obedience 
to laws which govern some unknown 'force' in 
nature ; and that these sentient atoms are in 
themselves indestructible." 

This is the idea of an essayist* of no mean 

* Wm. North, author of " Anti-Coningsby," etc. 



SPIRITUAL HERESIES. 131 

abilities or acquirements, who wished, in some 
way, to preserve the doctrine of immortality in his 
theory. He professed to have imbibed his infidel 
views, while a student in German Universities ; 
and illustrated the truth of his alleged contempt 
for death, by taking his own life, shortly after 
having elaborated the foregoing theory in wri- 
ting. 

It is thus that the truths which are revealed 
by the researches of science are made the basis of 
the various views of those who delight in the 
mistaken belief that the mind or soul can be made 
to understand itself; that it can be put into its 
own crucible, be pounded, divided, analyzed, and 
made to yield, in itself, and to itself, the mystery 
of its own composition. 

These vagaries remind one of the simpleton 
who tried to raise himself up from the ground in 
his own basket. Or of that other simpleton who 
was " hoist with his own petard" — for they all 
explode when touched by the light of common- 
sense. 

§ 5. Still following merely rationalistic views. 



132 SPIRITUAL HERESIES. 

and ignoring all divinely revealed truths as set 
forth in the Scriptures, we will now inquire, What 
material point is involved in all this controversy ? 

The spirit of man may have its birth, origin, 
or evolution, in his own body. How does that ad- 
mission establish that it is a "material" thing, or 
if of necessity falling within the definition of a 
material, that it should not be indestructible if 
God so wills it ? 

On the other hand, the spirit may be a dis- 
tinct, separate, and independent essence, coming 
properly within the definition of that which con- 
stitutes something immaterial — if that is compre- 
hensible. But where is the important point at 
issue ? What is there in these issues of double- 
distilled refinement, which impugns the inculca- 
tion of Natural Religion, that the soul shall 
always live ; or of Revelation, which says that the 
soul is an essence which comes direct from the 
Godhead, and that : 

u So God created man in His own image, in 
the image of God created He him, male and fe- 
male, created He them." 

We cannot see the important bearing of this 
conflict of ideas. Nature may or may not elimi- 









NO MATERIAL POINT INVOLVED. 133 

nate that which is imperishable, as God directs ; 
for the whole fabric comes from Him who is in- 
destructible. 

The disquisitions, dissertations, hair-splitting 
arguments, pulpit wrangles, controversies, f ulmina- 
tions, anathemas, etc., which have been wasted in 
arbitrarily determining and sustaining some or- 
thodox line, which is drawn somewhere between 
things material and that which is immaterial, are 
all lost on plain common-sense. It cannot be 
made to see the exceedingly fine line, or fairly to 
understand the necessity of its being seen at all. 

However, or wherever, the soul of man origi- 
nates, or whatever may be its nature, Christianity 
is at least sustained by the precepts of natural 
religion in the declaration that it is immortal, 
and that alone is the main point of interest, and 
all that we need to know. 

Let the philosopher, the psychologist, and the 
anatomist go on elucidating facts within their 
respective fields of labor. We will accept them 
as facts when proven ; but the deductions which 
may be drawn from these facts we will reject or 
adopt as mere matters of speculation, which may 



134 PRESUMPTUOUS FOLLY. 

be possibly true, or possibly false; but whether 
true or false, we have no means of positively 
'knowing, except they conflict with known truths, 
or with the infallible instinctive truths which 
have been written on the mind of man by the 
finger of God. Then we know them to be false. 



CHAPTER XYIII. 



Argument, — 1. Theories of spirit — Reasoning on the personal 
nature of the Godhead presumptuous. 2. Religious ideas 
of the personalities of Heaven whether real or illusory, 
harmless. 3. Pleasant delusions ; and delusions not so 
pleasant. 

§ 1. Argument which seeks to determine the 
form, substance, or personal nature of the God- 
head originates in presumptuous folly. Our con- 
ceptions must rest on revelations from His king- 
dom, or they have no foundation on which to rest 
at all. Our finite ideas are given to us, to weigh, 
measure, and test the things of this world. Spec- 
ulations on the personality of the Creator are ir- 
reverent, impracticable, and wholly a waste of 
time. Such presumptuous folly could result in no 



REASON INCOMPETENT. 135 

good even if, by accident, it should remotely ap- 
proximate the truth ; for it could not be demon- 
strated as a truth. The interminable Trinitarian 
and Unitarian controversies and oracular exposi- 
tions on this subject, also seem to be of doubtful 
utility, for they involve an issue upon but one 
particular dogma, which is founded on sectarian 
Bible views, and its fancied solution determines 
nothing. 

If there is truth at all in revealed religion this 
truth will be found with all others, in the one 
particular faith, whichever that may be, which is 
the authorized exponent and depository of the 
laws and truths of Christianity. All rational re- 
ligious controversy must confine itself to this sin- 
gle issue, for when that is determined all others 
are determined. 

Without the aid of religion we cannot hope to 
attain any conception of the personality of the 
Deity ; and — if we may be permitted to touch 
upon biblical teachings just once, without violating 
the rule which governs the conduct of this essay 
— we find that the Bible itself interdicts flippant 
assumptions on this subject. The Saviour declares 
that " no man hath seen God, at any time." The 



136 METAPHYSICAL ILLUSIONS. 

Most High is said to have declared to Moses, 
"There shall no man see me and live." The 
apostle Paul affirms u The Lord of lords" is He 
" whom no man hath seen or can see." 

§ 2. Our ideas of the form and appearance of 
the inhabitants of the spirit-world take shape from 
various influences, and in themselves can do no 
harm. On the contrary, the imagination which 
dwells on the resplendent glories of the Chris- 
tian's heaven becomes refined, elevated and pu- 
rified. 

Religious enthusiasm may merge into a species 
of delusion or ecstatic mania which so far from 
being harmful confers intense happiness. 

§ 3. Swedenborg was happy in the delusion 
that he could converse in person with the prophets 
and saints of heaven. He describes their appear- 
ance minutely ; but his descriptions conform with 
the pictures of saints and angels which have from 
time immemorial been depicted in the human 
form. 

The founder of the Quaker form of belief fell 
into a partial trance from the effects of religious 



PLEASANT DELUSIONS. 137 

excitement. During the fourteen days in which 
he remained in the trance state he believed himself 
to have been favored with visions of heaven and 
its inhabitants. His descriptions are similar to 
Swedenborg's. 

But before the Christian dispensation others 
were affected by the same delusions. Even among 
pagans there are those who profess to hold converse 
with spirits. They are subject to sensorial illu- 
sions in common with Christians. 

Socrates had his familiar spirit with whom he 
supposed he could converse. Joan of Arc was in- 
cited to her patriotic sacrifices by visions of the 
archangel Michael, who appeared to her imagi- 
nation as a young man of beautiful form, with 
wings, and surrounded by a halo. She claimed to 
be visited by angels in her prison. But her inno- 
cence, intrepidity, and hallucinations were lost on 
the ignorant and callous judges, and she suffered a 
cruel death by fire, as the penalty of deeds which 
were directed, as she supposed, by heavenly 
visions. 

The fear of hell, excessive remorse and de- 
bauchery, however, develop another species of 



138 DELUSIONS NOT SO PLEASANT. 

mania which is not so pleasant. Excessive re- 
morse, and the terror of eternal torment, beget a 
terrible species of despair. Dissipation produces 
a mania which torments its victims with visions of 
the devil, and these usually accord with the gen- 
eral notions of the appearance of the Evil One. 

These things will always remain matters of 
speculation to those who love to indulge in the 
reveries of mystical lore ; and will be seized upon 
as the means of another species of speculation by 
the unscrupulous and mercenary. 

Our cities are filled with persons who pretend 
to hold communion with spirits and to gather su- 
pernatural knowledge from the spirit-world. 

Some of these are good and sincere people 
whose motives are above suspicion and who are in- 
fluenced by conscientious convictions. 

Others are brazen impostors, who are always 
willing— -for a consideration — to impart such 
knowledge to their less favored brethren who may 
hope to derive benefit from it. It is hardly prob- 
able that the residents of another world would 
suffer themselves to be made use of to further the 
financial interests of their living exorcists. 



CONCLUSIONS. 139 

The inquiry which we have conducted thus far 
— we hope not in an indecorous or unbecoming 
style, though we are sensible it is open to criticism 
in other respects — has reached these objective 
points : 

1. Reason unaided by revelation can attain to 
but one spiritual truth — that God lives. 

2. Aided by instinct, we reach to a vague 
knowledge of the distinctions between right and 
wrong, and to the fact of a future existence. 

3. All merely rationalistic doctrines of spirit 
are heresies. 

4. For the knowledge of all other spiritual 
truths we must rely on Revelation, or they remain 
unknown. 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

" Heu ! patior telis vulnera facta meis ! " — Ovid. 

Final Argument. — The part of wisdom — Christianity a safe 
harbor — Universal confession of faith. 

" I sink under wounds made by my own weap- 
ons." This quotation from Ovid, we commend 
as a maxim for those who array Reason against 
Christianity ; for, after, all it seems to be the part 
of wisdom to escape from the whirlpools of inde- 
pendent thought, and to anchor in some safe har- 
bor of revealed religion. 

"Whoever has this conviction, let him cher- 
ish it. 

The teachings of Jesus our Saviour are the 

perfection of purity, truth and justice. They in- 

' culcate every virtue which adorns and ennobles 

humanity. None can err who accept and follow 

them. 

The humble Christian obeys, and questions 
not the law of the system of religious faith which 



UNIVERSAL CREED. 141 

he accepts as a delegated authority from God, and 
as the exponent of His will on earth. He only 
cares to helieve that he is gathered in the right 
fold. It is such as he who best illustrates the most 
perfect happiness attainable here on earth. At 
peace with God, with the world, and with him- 
self — untormented by doubt and full of tran- 
quil faith and hope — it is he who seems best fitted 
for translation to the realms of peace, which are 
presided over by the God whom he loves and 
obeys. 

The age ot fierce fanaticism and arrogant 
priestcraft is happily passed. Bodily torture, and 
the sacrifice of life itself, are no longer the penal- 
ties of supposed heresy. We differ — but we dif- 
fer in peace and good- will. Let us rejoice that in 
certain points of belief we are in brotherhood and 
amity with all mankind. 

In the knowledge and worship of the Most 
High, behold the world a unit ! Incense to his 
mighty name arises from all nations and all 
peoples. Christian and Jew, Pagan and Moslem — 
all colors and all races of the children of Adam — 
are bonded together, and can unite in one short 



142 UNIVERSAL CREED. 

confession of Faith — the beginning and ending of 
the Apostles' creed : 

"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, 

CREATOR OF HEAVEN, AND OF EARTH, AND * * * 

* * * *#■&#■**#*■** 

* * tt * * m LIFE EVERLASTING. AMEN." 



PART II. 



MORALS AND MANNERS 



OP 



MODERN SOCIETY. 



CHAPTER I. 

Inconsistencies of pulpit preaching and practice — Schisms 
in religion and science always arising — Self-elected 
teachers sometimes morally insane — Better that freedom 
of speech should be abused than suppressed — Vicious 
bigots muzzled — No more persecutions for opinion's sake 
— Missionary " blessings" sometimes look like curses. 

Pulpit preaching inculcates apostolic simplic- 
ity. It teaches humility, lowliness of spirit and 
equality before the Lord. 

But the practice in the administration of mor- 
tuary rites is sadly inconsistent with this teaching. 
We find that the remains of the lowly Christian 
are often disposed of summarily by church authori- 
ties, without reference to the purity, humility, or 
simplicity of his life, while the deceased member 
of purse-proud position, even in death, commands 
all the pomp of the cathedral ; — the swelling or- 
gan peals ; the sanctuary is draped in mourning, 
and fulsome eulogy falls from the pulpit. 

"Why should this distinction be made ? Money 
should not purchase, or position command, the 
10 



146 PREACHING VS. PRACTICE. 

ministrations of religion. Nor should it be at- 
tempted to pursue the shade of man beyond the 
boundaries of death with social differences of caste 
or class. Eminent piety alone can justify special 
religious ceremonies of respect or attention to the 
remains or memory of a departed member of any 
church organization. 

What is there belonging to a king's soul more 
than to a peasant's, which moves high church dig- 
nitaries to such ostentatious displays of solicitude ? 
Why should God's temple put on the habiliments j 
of woe for the one, while the other, perhaps a 
purer and nobler spirit, is passed to the land of 
shades without chant, or procession, or mass, or 
eulogy ? " Vanity of vanities ; all is vanity ! " 

Will rational Christianity ever prevail ? Sects 
multiply unceasingly. Differences of opinion on 
points of faith and practice arise every day. New 
dogmas are promulgated by systems of religion 
already established. After eighteen centuries of 
the advent of the New Dispensation some other 
truth is just discovered. 

Each zealot labors for the accomplishment of 
the peculiar millennium of his dreams. Thus it 



SELF-ELECTED TEACHERS. 147 

Las been always. Opposing systems of philosophy 
and religion have ever prevailed in the history of 
the world, and " history repeats itself." 

Schismatic shoots are eternally branching off 
from established systems of religion, medicine, 
law, and natural science. If directed alone by the 
desire to do good to their fellow-men, and to pro- 
mote the cause of truth, even erratic laborers in 
these fields are entitled to forbearance and respect. 
But there are many who are only dogmatic egotists 
or self-deluded fanatics, who are in the way of the 
advancement or enlightenment of mankind. 

Some such self-elected apostle for the social or 
moral regeneration of mankind is continually of- 
fering himself as guide and pilot to some fancied 
haven of happiness. He modestly assumes that 
he alone is the favored repository of truth and 
light. He hugs the delusion that it is his special 
mission to gather his erring fellow mortals in his 
wake, so that they may be equally blessed and 
numbered of the elect with himself. In his self- 
sufficiency he may even believe himself to be called 
of God and entrusted with powers plenipotentiary 
from on high. 



148 FREEDOM OF SPEECH ABUSED 

These are often only the symptoms of moral 
insanity. Persons so affected often thrust their 
views on communities in an offensive manner. 
They may become amenable to the law, as incen- 
diaries and disturbers of the public peace. In 
such cases it is right that they should be abated as 
nuisances by civil process ; but they should always 
be held as non compos mentis ', and, therefore, only 
to be restrained, and not punished. 

Peaceful individuals, communities and nations 
should not be invaded with distasteful doctrines 
against their will. u Irrepressible" missionaries 
should have the right of free speech everywhere, 
but not the right to foment strife unnecessarily. 
It is well to impart what we believe to be truths, 
to those who seek to be taught ; but we should 
first see that our own households are in order, so 
that we may teach by example as well as precept. 

By all means these zealous teachers should 
have all the freedom of speech consistent with 
peace. Their motives are often pure and good. 
Their lives may be blameless in all other respects. 
If their blind zeal should bring them in contact 
with existing law, deal leniently with them as you 



RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONS. 149 

would with one who perpetrates a wrong in a par- 
oxysm of insanity ; and above all, because they 
may by chance inculcate a truth. 

If this is a correct view we will say, as an ex- 
ample, that John Brown should not have been 
hung. He was impelled in his Quixotic emanci- 
pation incursion into Virginia by a sincere, though 
it may have been a mistaken, sense of duty. 

Our era is one of enlightenment. No other 
Servetus will expire in flames, a martyr to his 
fidelity to some special dogma. No more disem- 
bowelling of supposed witches. No more inquisi- 
torial tortures. No more massacres of St. Barthol- 
omew. No more mutual hanging, torturing, or 
burning of Jew, or priest, or parson. No other 
holy hermit will ever again inflame armies to no- 
force the Cross on an unwilling people at the point 
of the sword. These fiend-like exploits of fierce 
fanatics who " wore the livery of heaven" have 
passed away, and are pilloried in historical promi- 
nence only to be execrated — never to be imitated. 

No more " bluff Hals" — kings " by divine 
right" — to act as God's vicegerents and murder 
tiresome wives at pleasure. No more "Virgin 



150 TRUE HAPPINESS. 

Queens" to torture with prolonged imprisonment 
and then decree to death helpless sister queens. 
Thank God! 

There are, no doubt, yet, narrow-minded and 
vicious bigots in modern society who would revive 
these detestable persecutions if they could or 
dared. But the genius of enlightenment has muz- 
zled the brutes so that they can only growl, but 
cannot bare their fangs or bite. 

Happiness belongs to no station. It is peculiar 
to no religious belief or form of civilization. 
Wherever peace, health and innocence walk hand 
in hand, there it is to be found, whether in the 
wigwam, the cabin, or the palace. 

Why, then, this insatiable desire to thrust your 
peculiar views on your contented fellow-man ? In 
the name of reason let him spin out his short span 
of existence in peace and quiet — unless he invites 
your intervention. Pause even then. 

Where in history can it be shown that your 
boasted civilization has ever benefited a confiding 
primitive people who invoked its " blessing" ? 
When has it increased their sum of happiness ? 

In every instance — whatever it may have done 



TRUTH DISTASTEFUL. 151 

for their souls — your intervention has cursed and 
ruined them socially, or, like the objects of the 
missions of "love" under Oortez and Pizzaro, 
has even blotted them out from the face of the 
earth. 

Beware, then, how you assume to guide even 
your willing neighbor to some fancied haven of 
happiness. You may only lead him into some 
"slough of despond," whither you are tending 
yourself. 

It is natural for mankind to err. The hack- 
neyed maxim "Vox populi, vox Dei" (the voice 
of the people is the voice of God), is not sus- 
tained by history. Majorities are oftener wrong 
than right. The greatest benefactors of the hu- 
man race have been misunderstood, opposed and 
persecuted. New truths are almost always op- 
posed : and if at last recognized and accepted, it is 
their own intrinsic merits which enforce their ac- 
ceptance in the end. Another hackneyed apho- 
rism, " Magna est Veritas, et prevalebit" — (Truth is 
powerful and will prevail) — is more in accordance 
with what we know of the disposition of man- 
kind to cling to prejudices and to resist enlighten- 
ment. 



152 TRUTH DISTASTEFUL. 

But how easily we are misled by teachings 
which flatter our weaknesses or favor our preju- 
dices. The charlatan who chimes in with them 
finds society an easy prey. Whoever believes that 
these evils can be rectified, indulges in an Utopian 
dream. They spring from man's constitution. In 
all ages impostors have fattened on ignorance. No 
doctrine can be so monstrous that it is not followed ; 
no empiric so ignorant that he cannot find prey 
among those who are more ignorant than himself. 

The populace of to-day, as in all ages past, pass 
by the open portals of the stately edifices of truth 
and knowledge to throng the shrines of veiled 
Mokannas who claim to be the true oracles of 
morals and science. 






CHAPTER II. 

Law for the Poor, not for the Rich— Speedy justice to 
the vagabond — Its admins tration a farce — Reformation 
needed. 

If all men were equally conscientious and 
equal in understanding, we would need no laws to 
direct or restrain us in our social condition. 

Governiental systems are based either on a 
voluntary or enforced surrender of the natural 
liberties of the people governed. As we have 
seen in the chapter on the origin of Moral Laws, 
civil laws are framed in accordance with the uni- 
versal conscience of the people, when these latter 
have a voice in their own government. A gov- 
ernment which assumes power, and enforces obe- 
dience against the will of a majority of the 
people, is a confessed tyranny. 

Delegated power, which is exercised under and 
in conformity with some written compact, is sup- 
posed to be administered for the general good. 

But that government which interferes with the 



154 SERVANTS BECOME MASTERS. 

natural freedom of the individual, either in the 
disposition of his person or property, or in his 
relations with his fellow-man, or in his pursuit of 
happiness in his own way, more than is necessary 
to prevent his infringement of the same rights in 
others, is always a tyranny — no matter what may 
be its origin, or form. 

It is the natural inclination of those who are 
intrusted with power to cling to it, to abuse it, 
and to assume its exercise as of right belonging to 
them. A people must be ever vigilant to resist 
such encroachments and assumptions, or the ser- 
vants soon become the masters. But in spite of 
the resistance of the people, the purest govern- 
ments soon become corrupt. They have their rise 
and fall — their periods of birth, adolescence and 
decay, like everything else of human origin. 

The ambition and rapacity of the few, sooner 
or later, prevail over the rights of the many, and 
misrule, oppression, and injustice, in every con- 
ceivable shape, harass the multitude who are gov- 
erned. 

Our own government was conceived in wis- 
dom. It is still in its childhood, but already it 
has lost many of its original features. Fourth- 






SERVANTS BECOME MASTERS. 155 

rate statesmen have been tinkering and hammer- 
ing at the original solid structure until it has lost 
its beautiful proportions. Already the people 
find their reserved rights encroached upon ; their 
liberties more and more restricted ; taxation, to 
support the cormorants in power, and to pay the 
expenses of a conflict into which we were precipi- 
tated by the jealousies of rival office-holders, be- 
coming more and more burdensome ; and already 
a class of adventurers has arisen who assume a 
special right to control official position, and to be 
considered as a governing class. 

No more truthful watchword was ever uttered 
than the one so often bandied and so seldom heed- 
ed : " Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." 

Under every system, laws are enacted to pro- 
tect life and property, and to restrain the bad and 
depraved impulses of human nature. But in every 
way we find the working of these laws capable 
of affecting society injuriously. The ostensible 
ends of justice are forever defeated, when they are 
aimed at a privileged class. Delays, injunctions, 
quirks and quibbles intervene to shield the rascal 
who has money. But what virtuous and speedy 
justice is meted out to the friendless vagabond ! 



156 LAW FOB THE VAGABOND. 

If the poor wretch before the pompous 
" Squire" resents his sentence by some disrespect- 
ful remark or impertinence, this is the penalty : 

" Five years at hard labor, sir. I was about to 
use the discretion which the law allows me in 
your favor, and send you up for the short term of 
three years. I now sentence you for the fall limit 
of five years, to teach such ruffians as you are a 
lesson in manners^* 

Two years in the State Prison at hard labor, 
for an impertinence to his " Honor," the Squire ! 

It is to be hoped that his " Honor's" ruffled 
feathers were smoothed before some other unfor- 
tunate was handed over to the tender mercies of 
his " discretion." 

Law, which was originally intended to be a 
terror to evil-doers, has become a terror to the 
orderly, the honest, and the industrious. 

If a wrong is suffered, it is better to submit to 
it, if not too flagrant, rather than to appeal to law 
for redress. We cannot imagine many grievances 
for which one could hope for speedy reparation 
by an appeal to courts of law. In any event, it 
must be amply paid for, if obtained at all, in loss 

* From a police report. 






NOT FOR THE RICH. 157 

of time, humiliation of spirit, and expenditure of 
money. 

The adminstration of law has become so cor- 
rupt that it is "a stench in the nostrils" of the 
country. Its profession is demoralizing. It is 
becoming an enigma how a man can be at once 
a lawyer and a gentleman. 

A gentleman, in the proper acceptation of the 
term, is one who is courteous, chivalrous, an enemy 
to falsehood, the champion of the weak, and the 
implacable foe of wrong and corruption. 

Whether one can fill this definition, and prac- 
tise law with profit to himself, is an open question. 
We cannot find language strong enough to express 
the utter loathing with which we think of the 
whole subject. 

But the subject of a needed reformation of the 
entire systems of laws, and their modes of admin- 
istration, is worn thread-bare. To pursue it, would 
be like engaging in a labored dissertation to prove 
that two and two make four — which nobody 
denies. 

Its consideration so far leads to the object in 
view, which is to point out the tyranny of law and 
social usage, as far as they affect the weak and 



158 SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE. 

helpless of society, and this is considered at more 
length in ensuing chapters. 



CHAPTER III. 

SLATES OF THE NEEDLE. 
(A Plea for Sewing-Women) 

It is only those whose professions enable them 
to explore the hidden recesses of society who can 
realize and justly appreciate the appalling amount 
of suffering which is being endured by those 
women who are compelled to rely for subsistence 
on the honest labor of their hands. 

They have no voice in our councils. They 
cannot control or modify those usages of domestic 
economy which bear directly on their industrial 
pursuits. By a tacit social rule they are excluded 
from the right of suggesting or having any voice 
in the enactment of laws which might remedy 
evils which are felt only by themselves. It is to 
man, who has arrogated to himself the entire rule 
in society^ that they look for an investigation ot 



, 



SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE. 159 



heir social wrongs and for the means of redress. 
No matter how hopeless or destitute their condi- 
tion, they must suffer in silence. They hide from 
the public eye behind shreds of decency, and 
shrink, with feminine pride and delicacy, from a 
public exposure of their wants and sufferings. 
Half fed, half clothed, with their hearts sinking 
at the dreary prospect before them, the sewing 
women of our cities present a mournful array in 
their chilly and comfortless abodes ; hid away in 
dark lanes, garrets, cellars, and the crazy tene- 
ments of crowded precincts, where, with pallid 
cheeks and trembling fingers, they strive to eke 
out a wretched existence on the scanty earnings 
of the needle. 

Man, who rules them, who controls their desti- 
nies, who enacts the social rules of society, seems 
to pass along in the pursuit of his own aims with- 
out ever casting one thought on the helpless con- 
dition of those who endure evils which are the 
result of his connivance or indifference alone. It 
is he who apportions the labor, and it is he who 
grudgingly accords the insufficient recompense. 

How many martyrs to these hidden evils of 
society have there been who, loving virtue better 



160 SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE. 

than life, have given way under the burdens which 
have accumulated upon them, and have sunk into 
a sleep that knows no waking? while others, 
still more unfortunate, seeing the paths of honest 
labor full of grievous obstacles, with nothing to 
sustain them but honor and religion, which can 
neither feed, clothe nor shelter them, have turned 
away frightened at the dreary prospective, and 
have looked, with wistful eyes, adown the gilded 
avenues of vice which beset their paths at every 
step. 

"Whom shall we blame for this ? On whom does 
the responsibility rest — the unfortunates who yield 
to the temptation, or ourselves, who present such 
dreadful alternatives? 

Fathers and brothers, think of these things ! 
Make provision now for those who may be thrown 
on the world destitute of paternal or fraternal aid. 

Those who deem this picture overdrawn should 
go to the physician and ask him how many seam- 
stresses have died within his knowledge from the 
combined effects of insufficient nourishment, men- 
tal depression, confinement and hard work. Let 
them go to the minister of religion and ask him 
how many comely, but impoverished maidens, have 



SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE. 161 

turned away from his precepts in despair and have 
wandered in paths where 

Rank, malarial poisons 
Drug the atmosphere, and the flowers 
Of the wayside conceal envenomed thorns, 

in the vain hope that they might find there the 

means of escape from physical wretchedness. 

Let them ask our public officials what class of 
our population are most frequently compelled by 
sheer want to succumb to evil practices. And then, 
if it is answered that this class is composed of 
women who are thrown upon their own resources 
for the means of subsistence, let us ask ourselves 
what are the palliating circumstances, and how far 
are we partners in the infamy of the result ? 

"What aid, or sympathy, or protection do we 
afford our needle-women to enable them to resist 
the allurements of vice ? None at all. On the 
contrary, we abandon them to misery and starva- 
tion if they do resist. We throw them on the 
tender mercies of those who deal in the products 
of the life-destroying needle, and encourage a 
dreadful competition in the struggle for life and 
virtue by shutting them out from ten thousand 
avenues of honorable, profitable and healthful em- 
ployment, for which they are equally fitted with 



162 SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE. 

their brothers who monopolize them. Worse than 
all, instead of generously appreciating such labor 
as they do perform by an advance over the ordi- 
nary compensation, which would be no more than 
a chivalrous encouragement which the strong ever 
owes the weak, their labor is universally and sys- 
tematically depreciated. 

The era of the sewing-machine has mitigated 
some of the former unendurable wretchedness of 
the sewing-woman's life, but the compensation 
obtained for the labor performed is still woefully 
deficient. 

"We do not wish to be understood as intimating 
that self-abandonment is a frequent result of the 
evils of our female industrial system. To their 
honor be it spoken, where one resorts to this last 
deplorable method of present relief, hundreds em- 
brace the life of misery, toil and privation, the 
sacrifice of every personal attraction, and even the 
speedy deaths that are presented as the only dread 
alternatives. 

What must be the thoughts of the widowed 
mother while she plies her needle for her own and 
her children's subsistence during the tedious hours 
of night-work ? How often are her aching eyes 



SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE. 163 

dimmed with tears which will not back to their 
fountain? And if sickness overtakes her — what 
reliance has she then % None but the Great Father 
of the desolate, the friendless, the widow and the 
orphan, to whom in agony of mind and bitterness 
of spirit thousands hourly and daily appeal from 
the heartlessness of man. 

It is true that some are favored or fortunate. 
They engage in some fortunately successful pur- 
suit, or are encouraged or aided by wealthy 
friends, until they attain a point which places them 
above want. But, unhappily, these are rare ex- 
ceptions to the general rule. 

Many ladies are reduced by reverses of fortune 
from stations where they have acquired ideas of 
refinement, delicacy, and, perhaps, pride, which 
totally unfits them to encounter the perils of their 
reduced situation. How frequently we have ob- 
served such persons suffer the most aggravating 
privations rather than appeal to the charities ot 
the world ; and when at length compelled to dis- 
close their necessities, their mental anguish has 
been, if possible, more pitiable than their physical 
sufferings. 

All the departments of female industry appear 



164: SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE. 

to be placed in the same category. All present 
tlie same deplorable picture — a scanty amount of 
hard work, with insufficient pay and no prospect 
of relief or change, unless the efforts of those 
philanthropic ladies who have assumed the cham- 
pionship of their sex, and are endeavoring to ex- 
tend the sphere of female labor, shall be more cor- 
dially seconded and less sneered at. Their efforts 
to open new avenues of employment, to effect an 
increase of compensation, and to obtain for them- 
selves the same immunities and privileges in their 
proper industrial pursuits which are accorded by 
law and usage to the stronger sex, should be met 
with encouragement and not with opprobrious ep- 
ithets addressed to what we are pleased to term 
" strong-minded " proclivities. 

There can be no question but that a reformation 
is needed which promises speedy relief. 

Many of us have lavished money and immense 
amounts of sympathy on foreign populations, 
whose pleas for aid cannot compare in eloquence 
or urgency with those which rise in our very midst. 
Let us repudiate the purblind philanthropy which 
ever looks abroad for objects on which to lavish 
aid and sympathy, while there are so many who 
crave aid and charity at home. 



SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE. 165 

This is a theme which should commend itself 
in a special manner to the more favored daughters 
of Fortune, who, nursed in the lap of luxury and 
surrounded by all the appliances of comfort, live 
in happy ignorance of the distresses of their less 
favored sisters. Between the festive scenes of 
gayety and mirth in which the first move, and the 
harrowing tragedies of despair and want in which 
the last take part, a heavy curtain drops in impen- 
etrable folds. It is right that we should draw it 
aside. 

Surely those who are so richly endowed in 
person and fortune must abound in the more beau- 
tiful attribute of benevolence. The gewgaws of 
art pale before the more priceless jewels of charity, 
kindliness and sympathy, which nature has con- 
ferred on the sex with a bounteous hand. Let 
them do their part for the melioration of the evils 
which have been detailed. We do not willingly 
obtrude these sad truths on their attention, but we 
must expose the evil if we would remove it. 
Like the physician, if we would remove or heal 
this leprous ulcer of society we must remove the 
noisome bandages which envelop and hide it, ere 
we can apply the remedy. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

woman's rights theories. 

Modern society is exercised over theories 
which seek the amelioration of many evils which 
have their growth in unhealthy codes of ethics, 
social and moral. Those which concern women 
alone are laudable while they are confined to the 
assertion of prerogatives which can be exercised 
without the sacrifice of the reserve, modesty, and 
shrinking delicacy so becoming to the sex, and 
while they do no violence to the relative posi- 
tion in which Nature has placed the sexes. 

Man and woman should stand equal before the 
law. No right accorded to one, can be denied to 
the other with justice. Woman's failings, preju- 
dices, wishes, and wants, her right to the pursuit 
of happiness in her own way, untrammelled by ty- 
rannical supervision or direction, should be meted 
out, estimated, weighed and measured, precisely 
as they are measured and accorded to her fellow- 






woman's eights theories. 167 

creatures of the other sex. That they should have 
equal rights in property, in the custody and con- 
trol of their children, to follow avocations suitable 
to their strength, to hold official positions which 
do not bring them in contact with the rougher 
elements of society, or which do not require work 
of body or mind above their natural capacity, 
and, in short, to every privilege which does not 
plainly conflict against natural order — are all self- 
evident propositions. 

To engage in the rougher battles of life, or in 
labor unsuited to her physical conformation, to 
abandon the domestic circle for the political arena, 
to turn sailor, or soldier, or artisan, are all as 
plainly interdicted by every natural indication. 

The refinement of mind, modesty of feeling, 
and the maidenly and matronly instincts of a good 
woman are her best guides in the selection of her 
proper sphere, or in the assertion of her proper 
rights, in all her relations, as daughter, wife, or 
mother. Let her have the fullest liberty consist- 
ent with the rights of others, and with the pres- 
ervation of order. Nature will hold her where 
she properly belongs, and will bring her back 
whenever she plays truant to its teachings. 



168 woman's eights theories. 

The laws of Marriage are a source of discon- 
tent to the more restive of the sex. They assume 
the bonds voluntarily, but when the yoke begins 
to gall, and the bond becomes distasteful, they are 
naturally more helpless of escape than man, and 
the law makes them still more so. 

Why any man should wish to compel a woman 
to live with him as a wife, is an anomaly in hu- 
man nature that shocks all sense of propriety. It 
is a species of compulsory natural incest — a com- 
merce against which nature revolts, at least on one 
side — which no religious ceremony or social usage 
can gloss over. 

Mutual preference, love and respect, make the 
marriage compact a bond of happiness. But the 
personal dislike and loathing which grows on an 
enforced partnership, must be a terrible punish- 
ment indeed — especially to a woman of sensibility. 

On the other hand, marriage is supposed to be 
a contract, made with due deliberation, and from 
mutual preference ; and, therefore, not to be dis- 
solved at will, by either party. It is entered into 
for " better or for worse." Even mutual consent 
will not always dissolve it in the eye of ecclesiasti- 






woman's rights theories. 169 

cal law. The marriage vows are considered to be 
made for life, and that the contract can only end 
with life. 

An honorable man would never think of de- 
serting his wife, who had been smitten by Provi- 
dence with some grave misfortune to mind or 
body. He takes the chances, and must abide by 
his choice. An honorable wife will cling to her 
husband through every misfortune. 

But in either case, moral perfidy, debauchery, 
infamous conduct, and various disgusting traits 
and habits, must make the tie an irksome one in- 
deed. 

In all cases of lapses from conventional rules, 
which are not flagrant on their face, let us judge 
charitably. We know but little of each other's 
trials, and we have no positive assurance that the 
rules which govern the relations of the sexes are 
all founded in perfect wisdom, or that their vio- 
lation is always so heinous an offence as we are 
taught to believe. 



CHAPTEE Y. 

AFFINITIES AND DIVORCES. 

Evils which spring from social heresies — Special argu 
ments reviewed — Only one tolerable feature. 

The license which is inculcated by modern 
affinity theories is not alone in direct violation of 
ecclesiastical law, but it is plainly antagonistic to 
the best interests of society, and to the suggestions 
of experience and common-sense. 

The sanctity of family ties, and of every domes- 
tic relation, about which gather the purest and 
best affections and impulses of human nature, be- 
come imperilled the moment we become restive 
under the restraints which guard and preserve 
the inviolability of the marriage relation. 

The love of husband and wife, of parent and 
child, of brother and sister ; all the dear associa- 
tions which cling around the memory of our child- 
hood's home ; all that perfect union of hearts and 
interests which gather round the domestic fire- 



AFFINITIES AND DIVORCES. 171 

side ; all the holy influences of a life-long union 
of two natures which is sanctioned b # y the solem- 
nities of religion ; all the pride of descent which 
can point to a line of honorable ancestry — all 
these, and many other of the most happy relations 
of life, which have grown from the experience 
and practice of ages, are directly assailed by this 
fantastic growth of modern socialism. 

We w T ill consider briefly an argument in favor 
of this new phase of socialistic morality, offered 
by one of its advocates, because it boldly conveys 
and concisely embodies the salient points of the 
system. We will not estimate the violation of 
the precepts of Christianity which the heresy in- 
volves, for the reason that a plea may be entered 
for a bar of judgment, on the ground of disbelief 
in its authority. Here is the argument : 

"(1.) Why is the world so stupid as not to see 
that the moment a married couple cease to be 
happy, should be the moment of their separation ? 
(2.) To throw any obstacle in the way of divorce 
is a monstrous absurdity. (3.) Marriage should 
be simply a cordial contract between tw r o parties. 
To make it more, is an invention of fiend-like cru- 



172 AFFINITIES AND DIVORCES. 

elty. (4.) Reason, when divested of religious 
prejudice, must recognize the same absolute free- 
dom, in the relation of the sexes, as in those of 
commerce and friendship. (5.) There is but one 
law which should ever bind two human beings 
together — the law of Love. To apply brute force 
(that is, legal restraint or penalty) to the regu- 
lation of the spontaneous passions of our na- 
ture, is a miserable remnant of barbarism. Let 
those who love be united- — let those who hate be 
parted. All other systems are the insanities of 
diseased minds: superstitions of an ignorant age 
past. (6.) Imagine two young married couples, 
equally ill-assorted and wretched, placed upon an 
island, discovering that by a simple exchange of 
partners they can convert a social Hell into a 
Paradise. What are they to do ? Endure the 
torments of love on the one hand, and disgust on 
the other, in conformity with the laws of man — 
or embrace happiness and a new life, in confor- 
mity with the laws of Nature ? " 

This is a bold and plausible indictment of the 
marriage institution. But a close examination 
reveals the fact that it lacks the very essential 






AFFINITIES AND DIVORCES. 173 

element of relevancy. A man of straw is built 
to be demolished. The argument touches on no 
point of issue at all. It is intended to be a de- 
nunciation of wedlock, as recognized and solem- 
nized by religion and law. But it only arraigns 
a supposititious tie between the sexes, which, if it 
exists at all, is not the fault of the religious cere- 
mony, but of the parties interested, who violate 
the injunctions of religion, and obtain its sanction 
under false pretences. 

(1.) If they " cease to be happy," it is probably 
some fault of their own. The mutual selection is 
jprima facie evidence that it was a happy union 
at first, or it would not have been consummated. 
If happy in the beginning, the fault must be in 
themselves, and they should bear the penalty pa- 
tiently, without trying to cast the blame on rites 
which they invoked themselves. If separated, 
and again permitted to marry others, the presump- 
tion is, that the original couple of irreconcilables 
would carry their faults into their new relations, 
and four persons would then have their happiness 
wrecked, instead of two. 

(2.) It is no " absurdity" to throw obstacles in 
the way of divorce. Such a charge is arraigning 



174: AFFINITIES AND DIVORCES. 

the wisdom of centuries, for out of this have grown 
these obstacles, w^hich are essential to restrain the 
unbridled passions of humanity, and to protect in- 
nocent offspring from disgrace and neglect. 

Marriage is a voluntary act; no coercion is 
authorized, or supposed. It is the officiating per- 
son's duty to warn the parties of the solemnity and 
responsibility of the step, and to urge them to 
pause, and estimate its importance to their future 
welfare, before it is irrevocably taken. 

If this advice is unheeded, and deaf ears are 
turned to the warning, it is the sole fault of the 
foolish couple. If it is not given, it is the fault 
of the one who officiates at the ceremony, and of 
the natural guardians of the young couple. 

If coercion is used to force either party into 
an unwilling union, that, indeed, is a violation of 
the laws of Grod, man, and Nature, and is in no 
w T ay binding upon the victim. 

(3.) It is taken for granted that marriages are 
" always cordial contracts between two parties." 
Who advocates that they should not be ? 

(4.) A union for the perpetuation of the spe- 
cies, and for mutual aid, happiness and comfort, 
is hardly to be placed in the category of a com- 



AFFINITIES AND DIVORCES. 175 

mercial or friendly transaction. That proposition 
is very weak. 

(5.) The "law of Love*' is that which is 
always expected to induce people to invoke the 
solemnities of a ceremony which binds them to- 
gether for life. Surely no two sane persons would 
apply for a license to intermarry for a week, or a 
month, or a year. Those who have such notions 
are free to carry them out at their own proper 
risk. They need not inveigh against a legitimate 
and wise institution, which is sanctioned by relig- 
ion, because it is not suitable to their peculiar 
cases. If society is unjust in its determined con- 
demnation of such alliances, they have the free 
alternative of letting them alone, or of defying 
public opinion — just as they please. 

(6.) " Two young couples" who would isolate 
themselves " on an island " and become " illy-as- 
sorted and wretched," deserve to remain wretched 
for their folly. Why need they " assort" them- 
selves at all, unless with deliberation and from 
mutual preference ? 

If so fickle as to covet each other's mates and 
nests, before the latter are fairly made, the poor 
" young" birds must be of the species which fur- 



176 AFFINITIES AND DIVORCES. 

nish feather beds. The cackling of such silly- 
creatures is said to have saved Rome once ; but it 
will hardly save such puerile complaints from well- 
merited ridicule. 

If the arguments which are reviewed in the 
foregoing paragraphs are among the best that can 
be urged in favor of modern socialistic ideas, they 
will prove neither dangerous nor persuasive to the 
thoughtful. Mormondom in Utah, Modern Times 
on Long Island, New Harmony in Indiana, and 
other communities, have had their origin and 
growth, in part, on such views of the proper re- 
lations of the sexes. It is not a waste of time to 
consider and refute them, when such prominent 
evidences of their spread and vitality invite at- 
tention. 

As we have elsewhere urged, let these apos- 
tles of ultra doctrines beware how they urge others 
to follow in paths which may lead to misery ! 

Separation and divorce are attainable, even ac- 
cording to strict ecclesiastical law. The first is 
authorized by all religious creeds, and all civil 
codes, on good and sufficient grounds. The second 
is attainable almost too easily, by civil process in 



AFFINITIES AND DIVORCES. 177 

certain sections. What more license than this is 
needed ? 

The only feature in this new departure in 
morals which is at all tolerable, is the perfect 
frankness of the avowal and defence of the prac- 
tices which have hitherto been covered with a 
thin gloss of hypocrisy, and the bold demand 
which is made for the same measure of toleration 
and forgiveness for women who violate conven- 
tionalities that is accorded to men for the same 

ATTPT1 06S 

They should have even more indulgence, for 
woman is almost invariably led and persuaded to 
evil by man, who escapes the social penalties. 



CHAPTER VI. 



NATURE'S NOBILITY. 



Story of self-sacrifice — Pride, World-wisdom, and Charity 
contrasted. 

The grandest types of Womanhood, as well 
as of Manhood, are those upon whom Nature has 
set the stamp of Nobility. They belong to no 
special class or condition of society ; but, like gems 
of price, they are met with but rarely. 

It is not wealth, or education, or position, or 
rank, or power ; but it is the noble soul, the vig- 
orous brain, the generous emotions, the large 
heart, and the healthy blood which make the true 
Grandees, whether they are in homespun or satin, 
jeans or velvet, or in a cottage or a castle. The 
rest are counterfeits. 

How ostentation impresses the ignoble ! Money- 
worship is the meanness of the age ; but money 
cannot purchase the treasures which Nature con- 



nature's nobility. 179 

fers on her favorites, with a bounteous hand, and 
without price. 

Every day we may see little queens in rags, 
and beggarly natures in purple and silk ; real lit- 
tle princes bearing burdens, and dawdling sprouts 
of sickly gentility aping princely #irs. Who 
would not rather be the first than the last ? 

Looking back through thirty years of adult 
age, in one's own experience, memory gathers a 
pleasing array of the generous deeds of chivalrous 
men and ministering women. It is good to con- 
template them — for faith in human nature often 
falters, and needs to be revived. 

Of all which live in the writer's recollection 
the palm of preeminence must be accorded to a 
woman — a poor woman, left alone to fight the bat- 
tle of life, with no aspirations or expectations 
other than became her station in life. 

A friendless stranger-girl, young like the her- 
oine of my story, came to a western city to be 
numbered among the slaves of the needle. In a 
few days, the stranger-girl was smitten with a 
disease which proved to be the small-pox. 

The victim was about to be transferred to the 
pest-house, and was frenzied with terror. 






180 STORY OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 

Her friendlcssness, helplessness, and suffering 
appealed to the sympathy of my seamstress hero- 
ine, who was boarding in the same house. She 
determined to assume the care and charge of the 
sick girl herself. By the expenditure of all her 
slender means, and the pawning of her little valu- 
ables, she raised a sum sufficient to rent an isola- 
ted cottage, to which she removed her charge. 

The smitten girl recovered under the affection- 
ate ministrations of her voluntary guardian and 
nurse. The latter seemed to be unconscious of 
any special merit or sacrifice on her part. But 
she, in turn, was stricken with the foul pestilence. 

ISTot one complaint or murmur was heard. 
She had deliberately assumed the risk of the in- 
fection, when she devoted herself to her stranger- 
sister, and had only hoped that she might escape. 

It grieved the noble heart, just a little, to find 
herself pitted on her recovery — for she too recov- 
ered. She had been comely, but the smoothness 
and perfect symmetry of her features were dis- 
tinctly marred. 

No one but God, the stranger-girl, for whom 
this sacrifice had been made, and the physician in 
attendance, knew of the patience, the kindness, 



STORY OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 181 

the simplicity, the charity, and the great love that 
welled from out the heart of that poor seamstress 
while acting as self-elected nurse to a stranger, or 
the fortitude, meekness, and resignation which 
she displayed when prostrated by the hateful dis- 
ease herself. 

How many are there among you, lady church- 
members, who are capable of making such a sac- 
rifice to a sense of duty ? 

"But she was only a common dress-maker," 
says some dainty belle. 

" She was a fool. Why did she not let the 
small-pox patient go to the hospital, which was 
the proper place for such unfortunates," says some 
worldly-wise and cold-hearted sister. 

Yery well. This young woman was only a 
sewing-girl, and she was not worldly-wise. But, 
oh, how immeasurably superior in everything 
that is pure, elevated, refined and grand in woman- 
hood — how much more worthy of homage, rever- 
ence and love, than those whose hearts, heads and 
understandings are so narrow as to be capable of 
uttering such sneers ! 

"With her, life's fitful dream is over. She died 



182 DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 

young, before she could have tasted much of the 
bitterness of life. 

But what a mournful belief it would be, that 
this sorely-bruised, but gentle, and loving spirit 
died with the body ; — that it is not now enjoying 
the peace, and joy, and blessedness which were its 
just inheritance, but which were denied to it in 
life. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT CONSIDERED. 

Such suffering as the sentence of death entails cannot be 
made equal in degree for like offences — The right of so- 
ciety to adjudge a prisoner to death not beyond question 
— Is death itself a punishment ? 

The infliction of the death-penalty, as a pun- 
ishment for crime, is becoming more rare as the 
world becomes more enlightened. It is possible 
that in time the sanction of civil law may be with- 
drawn from it altogether. It is open to grave 
considerations, both as to its propriety and as to 
its adequacy. 

The mental anguish which the positive knowl- 



» 



DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 183 



edge of the near extinguishment of existence im- 
parts, and the shame and humiliation which at- 
tend a public execution, are the sole penalties 
and all the punishment which a sentence of death 
can inflict, unless it is decreed that unusual bodily- 
torture should precede or accompany the throes 
which naturally attend the separation of the soul 
from the body. 

These latter forms of execution have been 
abolished from the statutes of all enlightened na- 
tions, with other remnants of the brutal instincts 
of barbarism. The mere deprivation of life, in as 
speedy and as painless a manner as is possible, is 
the only form of capital punishment now sanc- 
tioned by law. 

The questions arise, whether in many cases 
this can be considered as any punishment at all ; 
or whether it can be made equal in the amount 
of the deprivations and suffering it involves, in 
like cases. Every human creature must inevitably 
puffer the throes of death. This sentence has been 
already passed by Omnipotence on the entire hu- 
man family. Young and old, high and low, inno- 
cent and guilty alike, must die. The knowledge 
of the period and the manner of its execution, in 



184 DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 

each individual case, is alone mercifully withheld 
The anticipation and enforcement of this doom, 
upon any of God's creatures, by forms of law, oi 
in any way, except on the plea of its urgent and 
immediate necessity for self-preservation, is open 
to many serious objections, as to its being a mattei 
of policy, or of strict justice. 

It is questionable whether any one man — as 
the autocrat of the present day, or "kings by 
divine right" — or any assembly of men, whether 
convoked as conventions for the formation of law 
codes, or as judges and juries for decreeing the 
prescribed penalty, or as duly appointed officials 
for the execution of the death-sentence, are not all 
assuming a doubtful prerogative, when they take 
into their own hands the privilege of depriving a 
bound prisoner and helpless fellow-creature of 
that life which has already been declared forfeit 
by a decree of the Eternal, and which, but for this 
interposition of human will, w r ould be exacted in 
time and manner as most accords with His good 
will. 

The judge who dooms a fellow-mortal to a 
present and violent death, assumes a daring re- 
sponsibility; and the executioner a revolting one; 



DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 185 

for in one sense, they interfere with the designs 
of God, and send a soul to judgment before its 
appointed time. One wrong cannot justify 
another. Malice, or lust, or avarice, or hatred 
incites some guilty wretch to imbrue his hands in 
his brother's blood. 

Public vengeance incites society to doom the 
perpetrator to the same fate, in turn. There may 
be a vast difference in the motives which influence 
the murderer, and which actuate those who, in turn, 
murder the murderer ; but the result in each case 
is logically the same — two souls are dismissed to 
judgment, and sent back to the Creator, by human 
agency. The murderer, perhaps, hates his victim, 
for some real or fancied injury, and kills him. 

Society hates the murderer for this sanguinary 
act, and seizes and kills him in turn. Does the 
difference in the motives which incite the indi- 
vidual, and which actuate a number of individuals, 
organized into a society, justify the perpetration 
of the act, in either case ? 

The only unquestionable justification which 
one individual, or many individuals, can allege, 
for voluntarily depriving a human being of life, is 
the plea of its necessity for self-preservation. 



186 DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 

Each one's right to life, liberty, property, the 
preservation of his person from injury, and the 
sanctity of his home and fireside from invasion, is 
inviolable, and should be maintained at all haz- 
ards. If one who attempts to aggress upon these 
rights should lose his life in the attempt, he com- 
mits a species of suicide — he invokes and enforces 
death upon himself, though at another's hands. 
If God's good providence suffers the aggressor to 
escape and the innocent victim to suffer, it is un- 
questionably the right and duty of society to inter- 
vene, to arrest the offender and to mete out a pun- 
ishment proportioned to the offence. But that 
this should be the infliction of a violent death, in 
cold blood, is open to still more important objec- 
tions than those already detailed. These will be 
found in considerations as to its adequacy, and as 
to its uniformity in the degree of the privations 
or the suffering which it involves. 

If a human tiger is found loose, and running 
amuck, society, in self-defence, must capture, cage 
and chain him, as they would any other tiger. 

If he resists capture, or if there are no means 
to hold him, as in sparsely settled countries, he 
must be destroyed. The law of self-preservation 



DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 187 

justifies the destruction of the sanguinary animal, 
if he refuses to be taken alive. After being cap- 
tured, let his fangs and talons be removed effectu- 
ally. Tame and restrain the beast, by confine- 
ment ; mark him with an indelible brand ; subject 
him to a discipline severe in proportion to the 
enormity of his offence ; but hold him subject only 
to that death-sentence which has been already 
pronounced by his Creator, and which will be duly 
executed in His own good time. In this way, and 
in no other, can the punishment be made equal for 
like offences, and can be duly and justly propor- 
tioned in all cases. 

The mere extinguishment of life cannot be 
made to involve punishment equal in degree, even 
if its } olicy in other respects is clearly defensible. 

It is a greater deprivation to the young, than 
to the aged criminal. Some regard death as a 
welcome boon. Others shrink from its contem- 
plation in awful terror. Some become impatient 
for the moment of release. They place their 
heads within the hangman's noose, or lay it upon 
the block, with a sigh of relief, or with a ribald 
jest, or with a merry snatch of song. They have 
no belief in God, Hell, or Heaven, and want either 



188 DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 

to be free, or to be dead. Others again are de- 
voured with remorse and terror. They regard the 
scaffold with agonized horror, as a place from 
which they may drop into the clutches of waiting 
demons, who will convey them to eternal torments. 

The callous wretch, without a conscience, 
laughs at death. The novice in crime, who de- 
serves pity, is the only one who endures the poig- 
nant mental anguish which is all the special suf- 
fering or punishment which a sentence of death 
can inflict. 

Death in itself cannot be held as a punishment. 
The Christian often longs for it. He embraces 
it with fervor as the prescribed method of his 
translation to the glories of his expectant Heaven. 
The weary pilgrim, disgusted with life and its 
misfortunes, often craves the tranquillity of the 
grave. " Death ! It is a mystic mercy. It is rest 
to the aged ; it is oblivion to the Atheist ; it is 
immortality to the Poet. It is a vast, dim, ex- 
haustless pity to all the world." 

The English law, a few years since, delivered 
over to the hangman any poor wretch who could 
be convicted of a theft amounting in value to 



DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 189 

twenty shillings. Lord Ellenborough and other 
legal lights of the English bar, were so enamored 
of the pleasing privilege of adjudging their unfor- 
tunate fellow-creatures to death, that they opposed 
a repeal of the law. It was repealed in spite of the 
protests of a majority of the members of the High 
courts of England, who seemed to have been still 
inspired by the spirit of their amiable predecessor 
Jeffries. The infamies and villainies perpetrated 
under cover of law, in the history of mankind, 
make one shudder at the bare contemplation. 

As usual, the Bible — ubiquitous in the infer- 
ences which may be derived from it — has been 
quoted for and against capital punishment. It is 
claimed that it supports the right of Society to 
adjudge its erring members to present death. 

Churchmen and kings, in times gone by, as- 
sumed to themselves, individually, the same right, 
on the same authority ; but, in addition, pretended 
to discover that it also sanctioned the infliction of 
bodily torture, by the rack, the wheel, and the 
stake. Their codes were distinguished, moreover, 
by making it the crime of crimes — the most awful 
of capital offences — heinous beyond even murder, 






190 DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 

rape, or arson — to dispute their assumed authority. 
This cardinal crime, which they denominated re- 
bellion, treason, or heresy, — according to their 
understanding of the good book — called aloud for 
vengeance, and justified the infliction of death by 
the most horrible tortures. 

Poor human nature ! Your endurance, your 
credulity, and your inconsistency are alike incredi- 
ble, and past comprehension. Your heroes of his- 
tory are your tyrants and your blood-stained 
murderers. 

You give bays and laurels to those who give 
you over to wholesale butchery, and who drive 
you like sheep to the shambles, to give themselves 
dominion and power. You kiss the hypocritical 
hand which smites you, and laud the robber and 
the murderer who leads you to aggressive war- 
fare and conquest. You see no evil in the rapine 
and the lust, and the pillage and the cruelty and 
the woe, which follow the steps of the conqueror 
who leads you into the commission of unnumbered 
murders. But you turn upon the petty assassin 
who makes war upon society upon his own account, 
and perpetrate upon him the very act which you 
execrate him for having committed. 






DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 191 

We do not wish to be understood as making 
a plea for mercy to the murderer. There are some 
crimes so revolting and fiend-like, that a painless 
and speedy death does not seem to be at all an 
adequate punishment; especially when we rec- 
ollect that this same death, in a natural form, 
awaits us all, and that the most innocent may have 
to endure greater physical pangs, in their last 
moments, than we exact from the criminal who 
expiates his offences on the scaffold. Kill the out- 
law if necessary to prevent the consummation of 
his nefarious purpose. Kill him if he refuses to 
yield himself to justice, after his purpose is accom- 
plished. Dispose of him summarily, if he makes 
his advent ih communities where there are no 
means to hold him in secure and prolonged con- 
finement. 

In all other cases, when once in secure custody, 
punish him only in the body, and let God deal 
with his immortal spirit. This, at least, will obvi- 
ate the possibility of sacrificing innocent lives by 
judicial mistakes. 

Make him labor for his own support, and the 
support of his fellow-malefactors. Deprive, by 
constitutional enactments, the executive, and other 



192 DEATH AS A PUNISHMENT. 

branches of Government, of the power of pardon- 
ing convicted murderers. Let there be no release 
unless it should transpire that the conviction was 
made on erroneous testimony. A certainty of 
hopeless captivity during life, with a denial of all 
its comforts and amenities, with the brand of 
murderer and outlaw affixed to the condemned 
wretch, is an appalling fate to contemplate. Who 
would not shrink from it, and fly, rather, to a Death 
— the king of terrors" ? But whether the latter 
is, or is not, the most dreadful punishment, we 
have no right to violate any inculcation of morality 
or justice which may be involved in the question, 
merely to subserve a thirst for sudden vengeance. 
It is the uncertainty, and the mal-administration 
of law, which encourages the lawless ruffian, and 
which cultivates an impatient desire for sudden 
and certain vengeance in the public mind, and not 
the superior efficacy of capital punishment, as 
judge-advocates and attorney-generals would have 
us believe. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX 



HOLLAND, THE NATURAL MATHEMATICIAN. 
(Note to Chapter VIII.— Part I.) 

The extraordinary powers attributed to Mere- 
dith Holland, the natural mathematician, and de- 
scribed in the above chapter, excited much astonish- 
ment (which, in this case, is probably a polite term 
for incredulity) on the part of competent persons 
who had an opportunity of perusing the advance 
sheets of this work. Some other facts in reference 
to him may prove interesting. 

The writer's first personal acquaintance with Hol- 
land was made in Louisville, Kentucky, in the year 
1851. % In appearance the mathematical phenomenon 
seemed to have about reached his fifteenth year. 
The facts related of his early childhood were ob- 
tained from persons who knew him from infancy. 

Although a good-sized lad when he first appeared 
in Louisville, he was unable to read or write, or 
make figures, with the exception of a few crude 
characters of the latter kind, of which he seemed 
to make no use, as his intuitive solutions of mathe- 
matical problems were made mentally and instan- 
taneously. 



196 APPENDIX. 

John H. Harney, a well-known literary gentle- 
man, author of Harney's Algebra, and for many 
years editor of the Louisville (Ky.) Democrat, sub- 
jected the lad to a searching examination, for the 
purpose of testing the reliability of his answers, as 
well as to ascertain, if possible, the process by which 
they were reached. 

Mr. Harney expressed himself as being not only 
amazed, but confounded by the inexplicable powers 
of computation manifested by the lad. The latter's 
declaration that he read the answer " in his brain," 
without being able to tell how it got there, was con- 
sidered significant. 

The conclusion was inevitable, that the answers 
which he gave could not be reached so instantane- 
ously by the ordinary methods of arriving at mathe- 
matical truths, and that they must be solved by some 
indefinable power which was inborn. 

So much for the philosophic declaration that 
there can be no such thing as innate ideas, or inborn 
knowledge. Here was a living exposition of the 
fallacy of a theory which had been elaborated with 
so much care, labor, and learning, by self-satisfied 
philosophers. A System of Mind which has for its 
base immense tomes of learned nonsense, and which 
is built up into a pyramid of Essays on metaphysical 
propositions, so intricate that they leave any ordi- 
nary brain hopelessly bewildered that attempts to 
follow them, was thus toppled over by the touch of 
a lad from the backwoods of Kentucky. Without 
this living proof, however, there are numberless other 



APPENDIX. 197 

cogent reasons, which appeal to every-day observa- 
tion, in support of the old-time doctrine of instinct- 
ire knowledge. 

Holland was appropriated by some emulative 
Barnum, who exhibited him in many of the large cit- 
ies of the United States, as well as in Europe. It is 
a lamentable fact — significant of the hateful peculi- 
arities of human nature — that though the exhibitions 
of his marvellous powers were largely attended, and 
attracted much interest, yet he came back to Ken- 
tucky after a ten years' pilgrimage, as poor as when 
he left. 

His periodical epileptic paroxysms, and his men- 
tal deficiency in some respects, left him an easy prey 
to any who were capable of the infamy of taking 
advantage of his helplessness. These were not want- 
ing. He was robbed and despoiled in every way, 
and reached his home in 1865 without one dollar. 

Holland was impressed with the belief that he 
possessed a prophetic power which enabled him to 
predict the probable duration of life, and what he 
called the " lucky and unlucky" days of those in 
whom he became interested. He was given to star- 
gazing, and had a vague impression that he gathered 
this knowledge from some planetary movements or 
influences. 

The writer is in possession of a chart, which was 
prepared by Holland, after his return from his ten 
years' pilgrimage, and which, he said, indicated the 
duration and the lucky and unlucky days of the wri- 
ter's life. During his absence he had learned to 



198 APPENDIX. 

write and figure, in a peculiar style. The chart is a 
curiosity in itself. It is, perhaps, needless to say 
that the writer has no faith whatever in these 
assumed astrological powers ; but the singular horo- 
logical record, which was prepared with labor and 
care, has been since preserved as a curiosity. 



REASON IS AHIMALS-ANECD0TE8. 
(Notes to Chapter II.— Part I.) 

Anecdotes of the sagacity and unusual intel- 
ligence at times displayed by animals are always 
interesting, and are welcome contributions to Natu- 
ral History. Some instances of this kind, which 
have happened within the writer's knowledge, are 
deemed worthy of preservation, and are given here 
in further illustration of the truth of the proposition, 
elsewhere given, that animals do reason. 

1. A lady of Westchester Co., N. Y., was annoyed 
by her pet dog, Pinkey, who followed her to church. 
He seemed to know when Sunday came, and lay in 
wait outside of the house, to meet and escort his 
mistress. It was determined to keep Pinkey at 
home. On the next Sunday Pinkey's master called 
him peremptorily into the room from whence his 
mistress was about to emerge, ready dressed for 
church. Pinkey obeyed the mandate very sullenly, 
as if he surmised the object. When his mistress 
passed out, he made a dart for the door, but was 



APPENDIX. 199 

intercepted, and detained. He remained sulky over 
his defeat for a day or two, and then made friends 
with his master. When the next Sunday came, 
Pinkey disappeared some time before the church 
bells sounded. His mistress was waiting his appear- 
ance so that he could be fastened in. His master 
went about calling and whistling, but no Pinkey 
made his appearance. While looking about on the 
street he suddenly caught a glimpse of Pinkey, who 
was cautiously peeping towards the house from 
behind a large willow tree which stood on the oppo- 
site side of the street. There the rascal had con- 
cealed himself, waiting for his mistress to appear, 
and unheeding his master's importunate calls. 
Determined to defeat stratagem by stratagem, Pink- 
ey's master left the door slightly ajar, and concealed 
himself behind it — directing his lady to remain qui- 
etly in her room. Pinkey waited patiently until the 
bells had ceased ringing. Wondering at his mis- 
tress's non-appearance, he concluded to reconnoitre. 
Slowly emerging from his hiding-place, he advanced 
stealthily to the front door — halting frequently to 
listen. Carefully he insinuated his head within the 
door, and seeing nobody advanced his entire body 
into the room. Bang — went the door, and Pinkey 
realized his defeat. He gave a yelp of mingled rage 
and shame, retired to a dark closet, and for nearly 
a week refused to be comforted or conciliated. He 
felt the disgrace of being outwitted keenly, and never 
again attempted to follow his mistress to church. 
And here is another instance of canine sagacity: 



200 APPENDIX. 

2. A little dog belonging to a gentleman resid- 
ing near Stonybrook, Long Island, was in the habit 
of following his master's wood-wagon to the landing, 
some three miles distant. One day he was set upon 
and roughly handled by a large dog belonging to a 
resident of the village. The next day, though lame, 
sore, and bruised, the little dog persisted in accom- 
panying the wood-wagon again. When the wagon 
started the large farm-dog was also found to be 
moving along quietly under it. He was never known 
to accompany the wagon team before. The team- 
ster attempted to drive him back, but he refused to 
return. The little dog led the advance, limping 
and brooding over his wrongs. He. was also, proba- 
bly, contemplating the sweetness of revenge, and 
gloating over its near accomplishment. When he 
reached the place where he had received his ill- 
treatment the day before, he limped up to where his 
enemy lay basking in the sun in the front yard, and 
snapped and snarled through the pickets, in the most 
tantalizing manner. Thinking to repeat the chas- 
tisement of the day before, the village-dog leaped 
over the fence — but only to encounter the large farm- 
dog, who had been watching proceedings from under 
the slowly moving wagon, and who now came rush- 
ing to the rescue. 

The village-dog was nearly killed before they 
could be separated. The large farm-dog left the 
party after the fight and returned home. He had 
come only for the special purpose of aiding his little 
friend to obtain revenge. The little wretch was 



APPENDIX. 201 

almost human in his airs of triumph, and in his 
expressions of gratified malice. 

By what process did the little dog communicate 
his wrongs, or plan with his big canine friend this 
well-concocted scheme of retaliation ? 

Was it reason or instinct which governed their 
actions ? 

3. A favorite saddle horse, which belonged to the 
writer, while residing in the interior of. Kentucky, 
attracted attention because of his unusual intelli- 
gence. He would come at call, stand, or follow at 
command. He also became fond of hunting ; would 
arch his neck, and stand as if carved from marble, 
so as not to disturb the aim, whenever his rider 
raised his rifle with the intent to discharge it. On 
the report of the gun his muscles could be felt to 
relax perceptibly. His rider might dismount for the 
purpose of pursuing game in the woods, and " Toby" 
would either follow at at a distance, or remain sta- 
tionary, at a given signal. 

One cold December evening the writer found 
himself, with Toby under the saddle, some fifteen 
miles from home, on the edge of an immense body 
of unreclaimed forest, embracing thousands of acres, 
which was subject to overflow. Having one more 
call to make in the vicinity, he concluded to leave 
the travelled road, and take a more direct route 
through the woods, which would save a mile or two 
of distance. 

Shortly after entering the woods, the sun, which 
was depended on as a guide to the proper direction, 



202 APPENDIX. 

became obscured by some clouds, which brought 
up a sudden flurry of snow. More than twice the 
proper distance was traversed before the writer real- 
ized that he was lost. Brambles and cane were multi- 
plying. It was getting dark and turning very cold. 
Of course Toby was blamed for deviating from the 
proper course. The horse, in the rider's opinion, 
seemed to possess an insane desire to incline towards 
the cypress swamps of the Ohio river, some twenty 
miles distant. Toby wished to go one way, his 
rider in another. Both got out of temper. One can 
think better when cuiescent. So the writer dis- 
mounted from the fretting horse to reflect a little 
on the situation, and to determine on some new 
route. It was then that Toby filled the measure of 
his misbehavior. To the writer's utter surprise and 
indignation, the moment Toby felt himself free, away 
he galloped, crashing through the brush and cane, 
seemingly in the direction of the cypress swamps. 
The horse was soon lost sight of in the gathering 
gloom. After a while Toby halted and commenced 
neighing to indicate his whereabouts. He was found 
with his neck stretched and ears bent forward look- 
ing in the direction from whence his whilom rider 
was approaching. But Toby avoided recapture, and 
away he we*it again in the same direction. Again 
he halted, and again -repeated his neighing. This 
process was repeated until he reached — not the 
cypress swamps — but the main road in the vicinity 
of the residence which the writer desired to reach. 
Then his neighing changed to a whinny of satisfac- 



APPENDIX. 203 

tion when he saw the writer approaching. He had 
accomplished his object, and now walked forward 
voluntarily to surrender himself. He knew if he 
allowed himself to be recaptured while in the woods 
that, with the usual perversity of human conceit, his 
rider would insist on following the zigzag circles 
which he had been, doubtless, describing through 
the brush and cane, much to Toby's disgust. He 
therefore determined to avail himself of the unex- 
pected freedom which was given him, to lead his 
master, nolens volens, out of the scrape, and to dem- 
onstrate that horse sense is a 4 ; times even more relia- 
ble than human reason. 

4. The writer has often watched the interesting 
manoeuvres of wild turkeys, while feeding, and could 
almost be persuaded that he was witnessing the evo- 
lutions of rational beings. They are generally under 
the leadership of some old patriarch, with a beard 
pendent from his breast, which trails on the ground. 
At a given signal from the leader, the flock halts for 
feeding purposes. At another signal sentinels (usu- 
ally four) separate themselves from the main body, 
and march towards the four points of the compass, 
to a distance of from two to four hundred yards. 
There they stand with heads erect, keenly regarding 
every avenue of approach, or slowly stroll in paral- 
lel lines, without relaxing one moment from their 
vigilant watch, even to pick a berry. After a time 
the leader sounds a recall note, and other sentinels 
march from the main body, to relieve those on duty, 
whose turn to feed has come. 



204: APPENDIX. 

If danger is suspected, the sentinel utters an alarm 
note, of a certain pitch, upon which the entire flock 
cease feeding, and stand upon the qui vive. If the 
danger is discerned, but is not pressing, the flock are 
warned by a note of another pitch, and they walk 
slowly, in an opposite direction. If the danger is 
sudden and imminent, as of a cautious hunter who is 
detected, while moving stealthily, within rifle shot, 
a loud note of urgent alarm sends the entire flock 
instantly on the wing. 



LAW AM) ITS ADMINISTRATION 

'* That mercy I to others show 
That mercy show to me." 

(Note to Chapter II.— Part II.) 

A most notable instance of the mal-administra- 
tion of justice, and one that is to be deplored, as 
making a part of our national history, was perpetra- 
ted under the direction and sanction of the General 
Government at Washington. We allude to the exe- 
cution of Mrs. Surratt. She was doomed to death 
for an alleged guilty knowledge of the plot which 
culminated in the assassination of President Lincoln. 
She was hanged for concealing a supposed knowledge 
of her son's participation in the plot, yet he is to-day 
walking about in freedom, a living tacit proof of the 
great and irreparable wrong inflicted upon his unfor- 
tunate mother. Happily there is the poor apology 



APPENDIX. 205 

of military rule and public excitement, to offer in 
mitigation of the total infamy of the transaction. 

There is a disposition on the part of people gen- 
erally to ignore this subject. It is distasteful. To 
save national pride, it is hoped that it may be lost 
sight of, and so escape the notice of the historian. 
We need not hope that a deed so prominently con- 
nected with the most tragical event in the history 
of this Government, will be suffered to pass into ob- 
livion. It is well also to record the fact that the 
stigma of the deed should properly rest on the par- 
tisan malignity, and thirst for sudden revenge, 
of incompetent persons in power ; for it cannot 
be doubted but that the national conscience was 
shocked and outraged, at the time, as well by the 
severity of the punishment as by the manner of its 
infliction. 

The public execution of a woman, under any cir- 
cumstances, by the degrading process of hanging by 
the neck, is opposed to the genius and revolting to 
the sentiment of this age. Every manly feeling is 
enlisted in behalf of the weakness, the helplessness 
and dependence of our mothers, wives, sisters and 
daughters. They have no voice in the formation of 
laws to which they must submit ; and if the extreme 
penalty of death by strangulation is about to be 
inflicted on any of them, every sentiment of justice 
demands that such a dreadful necessity shall be made 
apparent by indisputable facts and unanswerable 
reasons, about which there can be no quibble or the 
shadow of a doubt. 



206 APPENDIX. 

It is one of the oldest maxims of law that " it is 
better for ninety and nine guilty to escape than for 
one innocent to suffer." Was it not within the range 
of possibility that Mrs. Surratt was not fully guilty 
as charged ? As a member of the administration 
party, upon which the responsibility of her condem- 
nation and execution was certain to rest, the author 
felt an anxious interest in the proceedings. It may 
have been owing to obtuseness of perception, but 
he could see nothing in the published testimony 
which could make her a murderess, either in intent 
or act; beyond all question. And more than all, even 
if guilty, as charged, beyond all cavil, the punish- 
ment itself, and the manner of its infliction, were 
out of all proportion to the offence. 

Condemned to death one day and hung the next ! 
A weak, widowed, friendless, despairing woman, 
dragged, day after day, in chains, under the shadow 
of the capitol of our great nation — placed in the fel- 
on's dock, with her trembling limbs dragging under 
a barbarous weight of iron — her heart throbbing, her 
head aching, and her ears ringing with the jeers of 
a pitiless throng, which pushed upon her day after 
day in suffocating crowds to insult and lacerate the 
feelings of the poor, crushed, cowering and trembling 
victim ! Surely this was no spectacle to present to 
the world as an instance of the vengeance of this 
enlightened and Christian nation, except on the most 
sufficient grounds, and for the most urgent reasons. 
What if the future historian should point to this as 
a record of infamy, and say that the woman was 



APPENDIX. 207 

innocent ; or that the offence was too venial to excuse 
the severity or the speed of the punishment ? 

What, then, will be thought of those who turned 
a deaf ear to the daughter's pleadings ? 

What will be said of those who turned coldly 
from her, or looked complacently on, while the flames 
of anguish were consuming her very heart ? 

Whether her mother was guilty or innocent, God 
bless that noble daughter ! Her devotion was sub- 
lime. It could never have been given to a mother 
who was wholly infamous. And if not wholly infa- 
mous, the policy or humanity of the act which con- 
signed her so hurriedly to the hangman as the victim 
of a nation's vengeance, are more than questionable. 
The daughter's frantic appeals for mercy for her 
mother, or even for a brief respite, fell unheeded on 
human ears. Let us hope that they at least reached 
the ear of Omnipotence, and that they will be 
weighed in the final reckoning, which sooner or later 
must be made by all concerned. 

You who read these notes, imagine for a moment 
that it was your mother, for whom you were plead- 
ing for mercy in vain. Can you form even a faint 
conception of the anguish of the moment ? 

The picture of that young girl, grovelling in de- 
spair on the steps of the Executive mansion, snatch- 
ing at the skirts of passers-by, imploring aid and 
sympathy, declaring her mother innocent, and send- 
ing out from the recesses of her heart shrieks of con- 
centrated agony when she found herself spurned and 
repulsed ; who can contemplate it without deep com- 



208 APPENDIX. 

miseration, and how will it look when indelibly 
stamped in all its tragic colors as an illuminated 
page in our country's history ? There was no excuse, 
at least, for refusing her prayer for a few days' time, 
to enable her mother to make preparations for death. 
Personal vindictiveness or malignity should have 
nothing to do with the dispensations of the law. To 
deny this condemned Christian a little time to say a 
few prayers, or to compose her mind to the dread 
realization that she was about to be sent by the hands 
of violence to the presence of God, was certainly 
inhuman and inexcusable on any plea whatever. 

In whatever aspect we view this unfortunate 
transaction, it seems totally unjustifiable : 

1st. Because the testimony as to her guilt, as 
charged, was insufficient. 

2d. Because, admitting her guilt, as charged, the 
punishment was too severe. 

3d. Because, if Mrs. Surratt deserved death for 
concealing her knowledge of a plot which was aimed 
against the administration of President Lincoln, 
there were thousands of women, both North and 
South, who were equally guilty in intent, if not in 
act, and who equally deserved hanging. It is not 
unreasonable to say that thousands were educated 
to such a degree of hatred towards the Administra- 
tion during the recent war, that they would have 
concealed such a plot, if it had come to their knowl- 
edge, though they might not have directly partici- 
pated in it. 

4th. Because, admitting her knowledge of the 



APPENDIX. 209 

conspiracy, it was not in accordance with human 
nature to expect her to denounce her own son to 
death, as one of the conspirators ; or in accordance 
with ordinary justice or mercy to hang her for not 
having so denounced her son. 

5th. Because the hanging of a woman is only 
justifiable when she is taken in the red-handed act 
of deliberate murder. It is even then revolting to 
our sense of what is due to the sex. 

6th. Because, however criminal she might have 
been, it was neither magnanimous nor proper to tor- 
ture her with chains, or in any other manner, while 
under trial. Her death, on conviction, was all the 
punishment the law required. 



END. 



WM. L. ALLISON, Publisher 






HANS BRINKER; 

OR, 

THE SILVER SKATES. 

r 

By MARY £. DODGE. 

If the concurrent testimony of our most impartial reviewers 
be worth anything, then this book has rarely had a peer. The 
story is one of engrossing interest, the characters natural and 
graphically portrayed, the language pure, strong and eloquent. 
No person, young or old, can fail to have their sympathies deeply 
engaged by this entrancing tale, and to rise from its perusal at once 
wiser and better. 



The following brief extracts are taken from a few of the many 
literary notices which have recently appeared : 

OPINIONS OF THE PEESS. 

ATLANTIC MONTHLY. 

" ' Hans Brinker' is a charming domestic story of some three 
hundred and fifty pages, which is addressed, indeed, to young 
people, but which may be read with pleasure and profit by their 
elders. The scene is laid in Holland, a land deserving to be better 
known than it is; and the writer evinces a knowledge of the 
country, and an acquaintance with the spirit and habits of its 
stout, independent, estimable people, which must have been gathered 
not from books alone, but from living sources. 



2 WM. L. ALLISON, Publisher. 

Graphically, too, is the quaint picture sketched, and with a 
pleasant touch of humor. * * * The book is fresh 
and flavorous in tone, and speaks to the fancy of children. * * 
There is no formal moral, obtruding itself in set phrase. The 
lessons inculcated, elevated in tone, are in the action of the story 
and the feelings and aspirations of the actors. * * * w 

HARPER'S MONTHLY. 

* * "A pleasant story, wrought out in all its details, 
with the minuteness of a Dutch painting of life in Holland in 
the olden time." 

NEW YORK CITIZEN. 

11 There is an originality and freshness about the story which 
renders it of fascinating interest to the boys and girls who delight 
in winter sports." 

NEW YORK INDEPENDENT. 

" To lay the scene of a story among the dykes and windmills of 
Holland is not a common procedure. Charles Reade, if not the 
only writer who has hitherto made the attempt, is certainly the 
only one who has achieved a notable success in so doing. As 
exquisite a story, however, as is The Cloister and the Hearth, the 
present volume does not suffer by a comparison with it. Though 
a story for and about boys, Hans Brinker presents as true a picture 
of Holland life as though its characters had been exclusively men 
and women ; and, dealing, as it does, with the sentiments of duty 
and generosity common to men as well as children, it has an 
interest for us all. It is by no means an ordinary book. It 
contains passages of genuine humor and of the truest pathos, 
and evinces descriptive power of a high order." 

THE NATION. 

11 The authoress has shown in her former works for the young, 
a very rare ability to meet their wants, but she has produced 
nothing better than this charming tale, alive with incident and 
action, adorned rather than freighted with useful facts, and 
moral without moralization." 



WM. L. ALLISON, Publisher. 3 

LONDON SPECTATOR. 

» * * « nk e j tg characters it moves on skates, and is 
at once easy and graceful." 

BOSTON TRANSCRIPT. 

" There is genuine wit in the description of Holland. It is a 
little piece of characterization worthy of Irving, or any of our 
best writers." 

NEW YORK EVENING EXPRESS. 

14 One of the best works of its kind the young folks were ever 
permitted to lay hands upon. While the plot of the story is 
calculated to interest even adults, the incidents related cannot fail 
to excite and keep alive the warmest and best sentiments in the 
heart of boy or girl reader. More than this, it is a store-book of 
anecdote. * * * The simplicity with which every- 
thing is told, and the ingenious and natural manner in which each 
little anecdote is interwoven with the big story, are the prime 
•charms of the work. Those who wish to put a good and worthy 
book into the hands of the young, and one which they will love 
to read, will find none better than this story of poor 'Hans 
Brinker and the Skaters of Holland." 

NEW YORK CHRISTIAN INQUIRER. 

"A fresh, sparkling story * * * teeming with 

live Christianity. * * * The plot is simple, the 
language natural and effective, and some of the characters are 
pictured with almost photographic distinctness and power. * * " 

EPISCOPAL RECORDER. 

"The most popular, and at the same time, the most valuable 
books for youth now published, are those which interweave 
sketches of history and travel with instructive and sprightly 
narratives. * Hans Brinker ' aims to give its readers a just idea of 
Holland, its customs, resources, etc. * * * It is 
a solid and at the same time an amusing volume, and we take 
pleasure in commen dingit." 



4 WM. L. ALLISON, Publisher. 

CHARLESTON DAILY NEWS. 

"Mrs. Dodge has hy the production of this excellent little 
work risen at once to the rank of the best writers of fiction in this 
country." 

CHICAGO EVENING JOURNAL. 

" It abounds with anecdotes, bright examples of human nature, 
and sketches of real life in the Dutch dykes." 

GODEY'S LADY'S BOOK. 

" The story is full of entertainment from first to last." 

PHILADELPHIA PRESS. 

" If Mrs. Dodge really has not lived in Holland, this book is one 
of the most remarkable, on account of its accuracy, published in 
our time." 

WEEKLY NEW YORKER. 

"There is not a dull chapter in it." 

NEWRE YORK BELLETRISCHES JOURNAL. 

(Translated.) 
"Hans Brinker is a most valuable contribution to American 
Literature, and well worthy of the attention of the enlightened 
portion of the German public." * 

NEW YORK EVENING POST. 

" * * ■ * This very charming story is written by 
Mrs. M. E. Dodge, author of the * Irvington Stories.' The lady is a 
contributor to Harper's and the Cornhill Magazine, and she 
wrote the article in the latter on the * Shoddy Aristocracy of 
America,' which attracted so much attention abroad. In 'Hans 
Brinker,' she gives a picture of domestic life in Holland, which 
will be recognized by all familiar with the subject as singularly 
truthful, and will interest every reader by the interest of the 
narrative and the simplicity and vivacity of the style." 



WM. L. ALLISON, Publisher 



The Irvington Stories. 

By MARY £. DODGE. 

No Juvenile Book of the day has awakened more general 
interest or won more enthusiastic commendation from "the 
press," than the " Irvington Stories." Every American Girl and 
Boy should read it. In order that the favorable u notices " which 
have appeared, may have wide publicity, we append extracts from 
a few of the many which have fallen under our observation: 

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. 

"The Irvington Stories, by M. E. Dodge. Illustrated by 
Darley, &c. 

"Very pleasant little stories, written in good simple English 
with just enough improbability in them to suit the minds of 
children, for whom the age of fancy and fable renews itself in 
every generation. 

" They are not sermons in words of two syllables, they are not 
prosy ; but what is graceful and lovely in childhood is appealed to 
indirectly, with something of motherly tenderness in the tone. 
Good books for children are so rare, and books to make little 
spoonies so common, that we are glad to say a word in praise of 
one so graceful and pleasing." 

NEW YORK EVENING POST. 

11 An unusually attractive holiday book for the young is published 
byWm. L. Allison, of this city, under the title * The Irvington 
Stories, by M. E. Dodge.' It consists of eight well-written tales 
on various subjects, elegantly illustrated by Darley. The tone of 
the work is eminently patriotic and American, and it must deeply 
interest the readers." 



WM. L. ALLISON, PUBLISHER. 



LIFE IN D EATH 

AND 

DEATH IN LIFE. 

A PARADOX: 

Illustrating what we Know, and what we Believe. 

•WITH CRITICISMS ON THE 

MORALS AID MANNERS OF MODERN SOCIETY. 



BY MATTHEW HOWARD, M. D. 



"I trust you understand how, though it be one of the maxims of 
true Philosophy, never to shrink from a doctrine which has evidence 
on its side, yet, it is another maxim never to harbor any doctrine where 
this evidence is wanting." — Thos. Chalmers, £>. D., LL.D., AstronorA- 
ical Discourses, 



This Book is a handsome 12mo of over 200 pages, 
printed on heavy-tinted paper, and treats in a bold and 
original manner and trenchant style, topics of philosophical 
and every-day interest. The first part relates to medico- 
psychological subjects, while the second attacks and an- 
alyzes various social follies and phenomena. Price $1.50, 
for which it will be sent post-paid to any address. 



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